The Queen Bee

A honeybee colony is reliant upon a single queen for the reproduction of its population. The queen has highly developed reproductive organs that enable her to lay up to 2000 eggs a day. The queen must maintain this high rate of egg-laying to keep the hive strong and effectual, replacing the thousands of workers that die during the normal development of a colony.

A queen bee can live for 6 years. When she falters in her egg-laying, worker bees replace her through a process called supercedure.

However, the culture of beekeeping does not allow the queen to live such a long life. More often then not, beekeepers will "pinch off" or kill the queen after one or two years, believing a young queen is more productive.

A Queen is Born

By feeding brood a substance called royal jelly throughout the larval period, workers create a new queen. When she emerges from her cell, she finds a honey cell and feeds herself. She then seeks out capped queen cells, stinging or biting them to prevent competitors from emerging. If two or more queens emerge at the same time they will fight to the death. Within a few days, she will take an orientation flight—circling the hive to find its position in relation to the sun. Then she engages in mating flights a few days later to become inseminated by a drone from another hive.

The queen maintains colony cohesion with the production of a chemical called a pheromone, which is created in her mandibular glands on the top of her head. When worker bees groom her, they pick up the pheromone on their antennae. This pheromone moves through the colony when worker bees touch, exchange nectar and pollen and communicate. A colony can determine the absence of their queen within hours.

The queen's pheromones have several effects:

• Suppresses the worker's urge to swarm and rear queens.
• Attracts drones during mating.
• Enhances swarm clustering.
• Suppresses the development of ovaries in worker bees.
• Encourages wax production.
• Encourages foraging.

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