The queen bee is a fascinating insect. She is the mother of all the bees in hive, responsible for laying all the eggs that will become female worker bees and male drones. She lives her life inside the hive, attended by worker bees who groom and feed her.
How does a queen become a queen? Why is there only one queen in the hive? Let us tell you about her life.
Her birth
Female worker bees and the queen bee have the same genes...and any female larva has the potential to be a queen. What makes the queen different is her diet.
When the honeybee colony senses that it needs a new queen, perhaps because the queen is ailing or is preparing to swarm, the worker bees will begin the process of raising new queen bees. This process is triggered by lower levels of queen pheromone in the hive.
Nurse bees will select 10 to 20 newly hatched female larvae and begin feeding them a strict diet of royal jelly, a milky white substance that be bees secrete from the tops of their heads. The exclusive diet of royal jelly turns on the female larva's reproductive system, turning her into a queen. Royal jelly is high in protein, simple sugars, fatty acids, B vitamins, trace minerals, and antibacterial and antibiotic components.
Each queen bee develops in a special honeycomb cell called a 'queen cell' that looks somewhat like a peanut. This video we took last summer shows a queen bee larva developing in a cell full of royal jelly:
When the queen bee larva is ready to pupate (metamorphosize) into a queen, the worker bees will cap the cell and she will transform inside it. At day 15, when she is fully developed, she will chew her way out of the cell with the help of a few worker bees. In this next video, you can see the queen sticking her tongue out of her queen cell - she is being fed by the workers before hatching!
She will then chew her way out of the queen cell by cutting all around the bottom in a circle, to create a little hatch door. Here you can see her crawl out right in the palm of my hand
The life of the queen
After the queen chews her way out of her queen cell, she has some dirty work to do...she instinctively sets out to kill her sisters....the other new queens. She will call to them by 'piping' - she calls out repeatedly with a high pitch chirp. The other new queens will pipe back and in this way they can find each other to fight to the death. Even the queens still in their queen cells will pipe back, allowing the queen the ability to sting them to death even before they have hatched.
Once the battling is done, the queen will take a mating flight...a one-time flight from the hive to mate with male drones. This flight will give her the ability to lay fertilized eggs for the next 3-5 years. You can learn more about this by reading our previous post all about honeybee sex which includes the best video we've seen of the mating flight.
After mating, she will return to the hive. If her mother (the old queen) is still in the hive and nearing the end of her life, the new queen will kill her (called 'supercedure'). If the old queen has left with a swarm, the new queen will take over laying eggs.
The queen will live the rest of her life in the hive, attended by the workers. She walks through the hive, dragging her abdomen as she goes. She looks into the bottom of every honeycomb cell of the 'brood chamber' (the boxes in the hive where the queen lives). If the cell is empty, she will drop her abdomen into the cell to lay an egg. In this video, we show you what that looks like:
In the summer, she can lay up to 2000 eggs a day! She will stop from time to time in the hive, to be groomed and fed by the worker bees called her 'attendants.' They form a circle around her, and will also spread her pheromone through the hive. This queen pheromone tells the bees that she is alive and well. She can live for 3 to 5 years. If the beehive is doing really well, she can run out of room to lay eggs, which can trigger the hive to start preparing to swarm.
As she nears the end of her life, her ability to lay fertilized eggs will become more sporadic and the amount of queen pheromone she gives off will decrease. As a result, the bees will start raising new queens as previously described.
The assassination of the queen
The old queen continues to lay eggs up until the end. Meanwhile, the bees start raising new queens, one of which will replace her. When the new queen is ready to take over, she will find the old queen to supercede her by stinging her to death. In 10 years of keeping bees, we have only seen this once...and caught it on video. This is a rare sight:
While difficult to watch, this system within the beehive ensures that the colony lives on. Long live the queen!
FAQs
A male drone will mount the queen and insert his endophallus, ejacul*ting sem*n. After ejacul*tion, a male honey bee pulls away from the queen, though his endophallus is ripped from his body, remaining attached to the newly fertilized queen.
What happens to the queen bee when she dies? ›
Lastly, when a honey bee queen suddenly dies, an urgent and unplanned supersedure occurs. Worker honey bees identify several larvae within the proper age range and begin to condition these larvae to become queens.
What is the daily life of the queen bee? ›
Daily life
A well-mated and well-fed queen of quality stock can lay about 1,500 eggs per day during the spring build-up—more than her own body weight in eggs every day. She is continuously surrounded by worker bees who meet her every need, giving her food and disposing of her waste.
Does the queen bee have all the babies? ›
The queen bee is female and creates all the babies for the hive. The drone bees are male and do not have a sting. Bees communicate with each other about food sources using dances.
Is the queen bee asexual? ›
Most animals reproduce sexually, which means that both males and females are required for the species to survive. Normally, the honeybee is no exception to this rule: the female queen bee produces new offspring by laying eggs that have been fertilised by sperm from male drones.
Does the queen bee mate with her own children? ›
A virgin queen bee will never mate inside of her own hive as she needs to take flight to mate. By mating during flight, a queen bee is able to increase the odds that she will mate with drones that did not originate from her own colony, and thereby minimize the chances of inbreeding appearing in the next generation.
Who kills the queen bee? ›
Without a queen bee, a colony cannot function. A queen bee may meet her demise in various ways. Sometimes, death may come suddenly, perhaps from a beekeeping accident or an unexpected attack from other bees. Other times, a queen may live a long life and die of old age.
Are queen bees born or made? ›
Queens are raised from the same fertilised female eggs as workers bees. A newly hatched female larva is neither queen or worker caste. There are small differences in the composition of royal jelly fed to larvae destined to be a queen or a worker. The variation in diet starts from the time of larvae hatching.
Is there a king bee? ›
In reality, there is no King bee within the hive. Instead, we have a Queen bee. In 1609, naturalist and apiarist Charles Butler published The Feminine Monarchie (The history of Bees), in which he boldly replaced “king” bees with “queen” bees, forever altering our understanding of honeybee colonies.
What is a male bee called? ›
A drone is a male bee. Unlike the female worker bee, a drone has no stinger. He does not gather nectar or pollen and cannot feed without assistance from worker bees. His only role is to mate with a maiden queen in nuptial flight.
Although the queen doesn't leave the hive as much as the worker bees, she can fly. However, since her primary role in the colony is to lay eggs, she's usually too heavy and swollen to fly. She doesn't need to leave the hive or fly often, as her attendants take care of her every need.
Do queen bees sleep? ›
New research conducted by Queen Mary University of London reveals that people should be more vigilant of where they step this spring, as sleeping queen bees can be found resting on piles of dead leaves after waking from hibernation.
What happens if 2 queen bees are born? ›
An instance where a hive has multiple queens may occur when a new queen hatches while the old queen is still living. After a daughter hatches, one of the following scenarios will likely transpire – either the worker bees will kill the old queen, the two queens will fight to the death, or the hive will swarm.
What happens if a queen bee dies? ›
Unfortunately, a queenless bee colony cannot survive for a sustained period. According to Sciencing, the absence of a queen bee affects the behavior of worker bees; they may become agitated or aggressive. Worker bees may continue to lay eggs, but because they are not fertilized they are all drones instead of workers.
Is queen bee the mother? ›
The queen bee is a fascinating insect. She is the mother of all the bees in hive, responsible for laying all the eggs that will become female worker bees and male drones. She lives her life inside the hive, attended by worker bees who groom and feed her.
How are queen bees bred? ›
Queens are raised from the same fertilised female eggs as workers bees. A newly hatched female larva is neither queen or worker caste. There are small differences in the composition of royal jelly fed to larvae destined to be a queen or a worker. The variation in diet starts from the time of larvae hatching.
Does a queen bee need to be impregnated? ›
Queen bees exhibit female sperm storage behavior, where they only need to mate once in their lifetime. Sperm from males (drones ) are kept in a special ball-shaped organ called the spermatheca. Queens can voluntarily control whether or not their eggs are fertilized as they are laid.
Do queens mate with their own drones? ›
Drones from several different colonies to provide the sperm for the queen. This is the only time that she will mate and with several drones at this time. She will have enough sperm for her lifetime. The drones in her hive are her brothers so will not mate with them.
How does the queen bee get inseminated? ›
sem*n (typically 8 microlitres in volume, roughly equivalent to 10-12 drones) is introduced into the queen's median oviduct using a specialised syringe. Over the next ~24h, sperm will migrate from the oviduct to the spermatheca.
