Chris wrote:

>>I had a colony that died out just before Christmas that, although  
queenright, had had no brood since before I first looked at it on 10th April  when I 
thought it was queenless. I found the marked queen on a subsequent  examination 
on 15th April.  They rejected all attempts to requeen,  including running in a 
virgin and there were no laying workers.  So when  they finally died some of 
the workers must have been at least 9 months  old.

I have in spring killed queens in small over wintered nucs that seem to have lost their ability to lay an egg. Later I discovered that these queens were able to lay and produce healthy brood if young bees were added to the nuc. I then assumed that there was nothing wrong with the queen but it was the workers that were unable to produce the glandular food for her brood. The alternative for the workers was to eat or remove any eggs that she would lay. Thus the colony was unable to produce brood even though there was nothing wrong with the queen. Was my assumption correct that the workers were too old to produce royal jelly?

Could adding young bees have solved your problem? 

Carl Webb

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