I live in Mn and in my experience establishing nucs after around 8/10 is too late, they don't have enough brood cycles to build up and make it through the winter. By Sept 20th my Russians or Carniolans have mostly stopped laying brood too. 

So Dave I just don't see what the mystery is if your late nuc is not laying and does not look like it will make it through the winter. You probably have no real foragers in there given the short time they had any brood, so they can hardly fend for themselves and probably would not take any syrup either. Why would a queen be laying if there are no foragers to provide pollen and nectar?  

You're even further north so in my view your season ended in early Sept and fiddling around with moving brood and making nucs is a lost cause.  Attributing normal fall bee behavior to CCD seems like a real stretch given that no significant reports have occurred in North America in 2009 either. 

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