There are some behaviors of the honeybee, like when to raise a new queen vs feed the larvae to become a worker, that have multiple possible triggers to the same outcome. Older study looking at queen cup vs queen cell vs charged cell being torn down: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00218839.1965.11100115 . I was quite impressed with how useless the queen cup was in predicting whether the hive would be using the queen cup for anything significant.
Amount of brood, pheromone signalling of the queen, which is probably related to the quality of her feeding as a larvae AND of the number of drones she found when mating, whether or not she is actively laying, whether there is a flow...ok, so we know all that.
Curiously, just adding a queen cell (capped or uncapped) is consistently unsuccessful in triggering supersedure: https://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/wurpubs/335630.
When there are conflicting signals, unpredictable behavior can ensue. At least, that's what I call it. Chaos theory is the appropriate perspective to take for considering this phenomenon (see https://science.howstuffworks.com/math-concepts/chaos-theory7.htm for a writeup of what that is, and see https://www.nature.com/articles/srep23492 for an attempt to use chaos theory for describing animal behavior), though it's been used mainly in engineering settings. I guess not many mathematicians and engineers are beekeepers.
For me, managing my colonies, this means I don't know which way the colony will jump when something other than "good broodrearing" is going on. While "you know it when you see it" is not an adequate description of good broodrearing where the signals lead to predictable behavior, each season ends up with its consistently recognizable level of brood rearing and pattern of space occupied by brood and pattern of brood on the comb.
So when I see that a hive that does not show the same pattern of brood rearing as its neighbors, I work to tip the balance. I confirm it's not mites, EFB, or too much nectar in the brood nest and nowhere to put it. I see what happens when I introduce a frame of eggs. 2 weeks later, I will simply replace the queen. No more wondering.
I've seen a poorly laying queen performing without supersedure cells for 3 weeks or more just once this year. I've been closely involved with 50 some odd queens (some are my hives, some are hives I sold, some are clients' hives who get inspection assistance).
Same situation for a hive with no queen and no more brood - sometimes they become laying workers and sometimes they don't. There are not as many signals involved here, or perhaps more of a lack of signals, and yet a hive without a queen and without brood does not always become a laying worker hive.
Sometimes a queenless broodless hive will accept a laying queen, or a virgin, and sometimes they won't. There is a lack of signals that would lead to predictable behavior by the colony, and so it depends on some butterfly's wings flapping as to what happens. ;) So I tip the balance - I put the colony back in a predictable state - I add open brood. I watch the colony until they show they are being regulated by signals from the brood - until they make friggin queen cells already!
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