Django throws ImproperlyConfigured error when loading URLconf on startup

I have a Django app running on a production server. It is handled with gunicorn 0.14.2 behind nginx. When I reload the app (by reloading the gunicorn workers), I get this error:

---
Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/opt/app/venv/myapp/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 101, in get_response
request.path_info)

File "/opt/app/venv/myapp/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 250, in resolve
for pattern in self.url_patterns:

File "/opt/app/venv/myapp/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/urlresolvers.py", line 283, in _get_url_patterns
raise ImproperlyConfigured("The included urlconf %s doesn't have any patterns in it" % self.urlconf_name)

ImproperlyConfigured: The included urlconf myapp.urls doesn't have any patterns in it
---

Others with this problem have commonly noted that it occurs while using reverse in a URLconf, but I am not using reverse in any URLconfs (nor are they used in any third-party apps). Also, this error only occurs in production -- never in development (using the Django dev server) or on my staging server (also using gunicorn 0.14.2 behind nginx). It also doesn't seem to cause trouble with the site at any other time then during reloads. And it only happens for the first 10-20 requests on the website (which makes me wonder if it's some sort of race condition, perhaps).

Any ideas what's causing the problem?

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