Good morning Baker
So what I'm thinking is that queen supersedure is an on going cycle with no consideration of the time of year. I think I knew that. However, bees are soo smart and intuitive that it surprises me that they would supersede a queen in the Fall knowing that there are less or no drones to mate with her. It doesn't make sense to me that the bees know they are putting the hive in peril.
Of course, we know that the queen could simply have run out of steam, or eggs, or sperm to continue laying.
And we know that queens don't live nearly as long as they used to before all of the pollution. They used to live up to 10 years, and now we are lucky if they live 2 years.