I had a hive that was queenless and attempted
to help them make one by supplying frames of egss and
larvae. It took two tries to succeed. The first batch
of queens hatched but no mated queen made it back to
the hive.
 
        I also had my strongest hive loose the queen.
Maybe my fault. They also produced supercedure cells
that hatched and again no queen resulted.
 
        I'm wondering of some what is being noticed is
a combination of normal queen mortality in conjunction
failed matings as a result of diminished/nonexistent
feral colonies. Maybe fewer drones make the queen an
easier target for predation? Maybe the drone
congregation areas are not all teeming with drones and
the queen doesn't get fertilized. In many areas the
overall population dynamics are totally different from
previous years as a result of the population crash
caused by varroa.