Could well be, if the new queen didn’t get mated, or was very poorly mated. How late in the Fall are you talking about?
The only thing I can think of it to order a commercial mated queen. Wildflower Meadows in California has mated Italian VSH queens into September. I believe one of the Hawaiian suppliers has queens year-round. They may not want to ship you just one queen, you would have to call to find out. That could be one way to keep the hive going over winter.
The golden ration of 1:2:4 eggs:larvae:capped brood is often mentioned. This is the ideal and shows you have a good queen and a thriving colony. Left to their own devices bees will have 20% of their brood as drones. This will gradually reduce to zero by the time the hive is making winter preps. This is why late supersedures often fail.
A typical brood comb of emerging brood will have eggs in the middle and brood of increasing age going outwards
Thanks for looking this up. In that case, I think it is highly unlikely that you would have a fertile queen in your climate zone. Short of buying in a mated queen (probably not very practical), there is really very little you could have done. It is very admirable that you are trying to learn as much as possible from the scenario, and I am delighted that you are trying again this year.