This ( droneless ) colony was a full blown one that actually gave me a surplus of about 30 pounds of honey.The Q was 2 years old and had laid normal drones the previous year. Her worker brood pattern was excellant .I just wonder if she was a victim of nosema causing her strange behaviour. They were strong into the winter but dwindlied to just a handfull of bees when they had died out.The thing is its difficult without opening them up to see if the stock had dwindled with the normal flying that goes on on fine days when the bees have their normal cleansing flights.I've kept bees for nearly 40 years by my latest reconing and I've never experienced such losses as in the past couple of years before.With such a late season ( I recon at least a month behind ) its difficult to get on top of the situation and stay there.Down south I could always nip over to the bee research unit at Luddington and stick a sample under a microscope to find out pretty immediately what was wrong,up here its all a lot more primitive and long winded to get answers.Still hey-ho !!