Strange Times in the Bee Yard

This evening Aaron & I worked the beeyard prepare to set up the new queens into their own hives on Saturday.  However, things were definately not as I expected.  First of all, several of the mating nucs were abandoned and I only found two queens in them!  Then when I checked on the starter hive, it was overflowing with bees but they rejected all of the queen cells!  The last I checked they were raising 7 queens, but the bees even removed the wax from the queen cells.  When I checked on the regular hives in the beeyard I found something interesting in Hive #8 where I had placed one of the virgin queens that had been abandoned by the bees in her mating nuc.  Instead of finding the marked queen that I placed in there I found a laying queen with no mark!  Where did she come from???  Plus, I also found a large queen cell...now, what's up with that?    I then looked in Hive #2 where I had marked a queen but she dropped into the tall grass, and guess who I found???  Yes, my marked queen that I dropped!  She must have lost enough weight that she was able to fly up and get back into the hive; I know she wasn't in there the day after she escaped.  So, all in all it was a very strange day in the beeyard.