In 1977, Colville, Davis, and Keimel [Positive derivations on f-rings, J. Aust. Math. Soc. Ser. A 23 1977, 3, 371–375] proved that a positive derivation on an Archimedean f-algebra A has its range in the set of nilpotent elements of A. The main objective of this paper is to obtain a generalization of the above Colville, Davis and Keimel result to general derivations. Moreover, we give a new version of the Singer–Wermer conjecture for the class of second-order derivations acting on uniformly complete almost f-algebras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]