I have seen something several times that puzzles me about bee life expectancy.  A hive can survive far past six weeks queenless and broodless in the summer.  For example I was asked to inspect a fellows three hives a couple of years ago.  All were started in the spring from packages installed on drawn comb.  One package went queenless right away.  He ordered another queen and it also failed rapidly.  He told me when I arrived it had been queenless since sometime in June.  It was mid September when I inspected.  So, that hive had been queenless and broodless for some ten weeks.  There were still quite a few bees in it.  Probably a couple of pounds.  There was a surprising amount of honey in the hive.

 A couple of years ago I had three nucs with what turned out to be EFB.  I first recognized I had a problem in late June but did not know what it was.  Lots of eggs and young brood but nearly no sealed brood.  Off hand guess 99% of the brood was dying.  A couple of these superseded the queen twice between June and late August and during that time hardly raised any new bees.  Brood breaks did not solve the problem.  First time I had ever seen this and I could not see diseased brood so did not recognize the problem very fast.  Yet, there were still enough bees left that after I treated with terra two recovered and with feeding got enough stores to winter ok.  Again, hardly any new brood for about two months yet quite a few surviving bees.

I have also had mating nucs without a laying queen for at least six weeks and still have enough bees left to add a ripe queen cell.  Those I start with a frame of sealed brood so they were just broodless for about four or five weeks but did not seem to suffer much population loss.

My son did an equal split on a strong hive in May.  The split did not raise a queen.  It ended up laying worker, but real lazy laying workers as there was hardly any drone brood.  It still had a lot of bees in early August.  Five shallows with bees clear to the top.

If a worker only lives six weeks how can a hive survive this long without replacement bees?  Can drift from other colonies explain it?  Or do bees somehow go into a summer conservation mode like they do in winter when not raising brood and last a good bit longer than six weeks?

Dick


" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken

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