> How many of these failures to supersede are the result of the new queen getting lost on her mating flight and no more resources to make a new queen? 

I am sure that happens, but the two hives I found this year both had failing queens, which were still putting out eggs. So, presumably they could have made queen cells, had they wanted to. 

When I removed the queen from the second one I found, and put in fresh eggs, they immediately started cells. (The other one I just re-queened, and they look fine, now).

Which led me to believe that the old queen had pheromonal control over the colony. I have seen the same thing with laying workers, the bees aren't inclined to raise cells, even from fresh brood. 

As an experiment, I kept adding brood to a laying worker colony and after several transfusions, they finally raised a queen. My thinking is that the newly emerged bees from the brood, took it upon themselves to straighten the colony out. 

PLB

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