This thread just gave me a thought: we were given a talk at the Bee society by a couple who run over 1500 hives. One of the points they made was that they closely monitor the productivity of each hive and are careful to weed out nonproductive hives by requeening them. They noted that some colonies simply never build up sufficiently to be truly productive- and that this was a genetic issue- more common in colonies made from random swarms, etc.
They bred their own queens using Italian and local dark ‘brumbies’.
So perhaps in these cases where a hive fails to be productive in a decent timeframe it may indicate that requeening is in order?