a couple of Pete B ships followed by > my comments.. 
Although queens have a 3–4 year adult lifespan, diminished longevity of queens (<1 year) is commonly and increasingly observed.

>We speak endlessly about a queens potential life but the wisdom from the old guys (the likes of Jay Smith for example) was IF your objective was to maximize honey production then keep young queens in your hives. If my sole objective in rearing bees was to maximize my potential honey yield my strategy would be to have nothing but queens less than one year old in all of my hives. Of course I get your point here Peter in asking these kind of question concerning queens being properly mated. If you have reared any amount of queens (and you have)every once in a while you will get a batch of drone layer or queens that lay for a little while and then don't. See comments below concerning nutrition which is only one variable in getting a queen properly mated.. high temperature and high constant winds can be a problem here in Central Texas. Since I also make/sale nuclei my strategy is much like Randy describes in that I simply allow the queen to lay a bit longer (build population) before they leave this site. I like to mark queens and this 'just wait' time is a good time to do that. 

We examined the viability of spermatozoa in sexually mature drones from eight apiaries in three counties in Central Texas during the summers of 2013 and 2014.

> Most of these were my drones from about a dozen sites plus two or three sites from a few other folks who allowed us to capture drones.  First I should say that technical side of this was via the vet school using equipment like that used to quantify viability sperm in horses.. but yes a huge difference in volume.  The technique was interesting in that it identified via stain viable, soon to be nonviable and nonviable sperm by color. Year 1 had it typical start up problems... started too late and the folks capturing the drones were lacking in experience in such matters (first year me and one student) and year 2 (I think) Adrain and Pierre. Year 1 I had no clue about capturing drones but we bungled along.  Sue C. gave us some tips somewhere along the way and we managed to capture a few drone to get the project started. The student did manage to iron out the problem at the technical end of this process and learned something about getting live species from the field to the lab in pretty hot weather. 

>2013 was not a very good year and followed a severe drought that ended in the late fall of 2011. 2014 was a bit better in terms of season.  I would discount contamination from things like pesticide given where I keep these bees <In the very distant past I have checked for contamination in comb. Drones were hard to find in 2013 and became more and more difficult as the season wore on. Poor nutrition and increasing hot hot weather would be my guess for number in 2013.  Better nutrition and a better skill set in 2014.

Gene back in Central Texas tending bees... 

          

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