Honey Bee Royalty: Everything You Need to Know About the Queen Bee
The queen. The matriarch. The monarch.
Much can be said about the life of the queen bee and her pivotal role in supporting the honey bee colony.
As her name suggests, the queen bee’s story is full of glory and drama. That is why we thought it best to explain her life story in dramatic fashion — And it’s hard to find a better drama than a classic episode of royal conflict and honor.
In this blog, you will learn everything you need to know about the queen bee and her role in the hive. In full color.
So, grab a cup of coffee and settle in — this story’s a good one.
The queen herself.
Born Into Royalty
Succession to the throne begins at birth.
Remarkably, the queen bee’s genome is identical to those of the thousands of other female worker bees in the colony.
What makes her different is not her genetics but her diet. Nurse bees secrete a milk-like substance called royal jelly, which they feed to all larvae in the hive — male and female. However, while a worker bee is fed royal jelly during only her first two days of development, the queen receives this substance throughout her entire developmental period.
Though the queen is the largest of the three castes, she takes the least amount of time to develop into an adult: 16 days for queens, 21 days for workers, and 24 days for drones.
During this time, nurse bees care for and nurture her just like the rest of the brood. Because of her special diet, the queen quickly outgrows her comb cell during the larval stage. Workers respond by building a special peanut-shaped cell called a queen cell. These are the largest and most recognizable cells in the hive.
If you have kept bees for a short time, you’ve probably noticed little cups jutting from the comb called queen cups. A colony usually keeps several queen cups on hand as insurance, especially in the springtime when swarming is more of a possibility. Queen cups should not necessarily raise an alarm for a beekeeper as most queen cups do not house an egg.
Left: A queen cup. Right: A queen cell.
When an egg is planted inside a queen cup and develops further, it transforms into the much larger queen cell through the efforts of the nurse bees. While in the queen cell, the queen advances from the larval stage to the pupal stage, and finally emerges as an adult on the 16th day.
Swarming and the Fate of the Colony
Before we continue with our story, we should probably ask why this new queen was born in the first place. (No, she was not an “oops” baby.)
What happened to the original queen? Why did the colony decide it was time to raise a new one?
The first interesting thing to note is that the decision to raise a new queen and/or swarm is not up to the original queen at all. Her fate is entirely in the hands of the greater population, who grooms, feeds, and provides for her.
Bees are more democratic than autocratic, despite having a queen. They’re kind of British that way.
A colony will decide to replace a queen for one of three reasons:
The original queen has died.
The original queen is injured or generally less productive.
The colony is growing rapidly and preparing to swarm.
The colony learns the queen’s health and productivity through the special pheromone she releases. As the strength of this pheromone decreases, workers know it is time to raise a new queen, either because the queen is getting older and less productive or because there is not enough space to lay eggs. (Perhaps because their beekeeper did not use a foundation with more cells for the brood chamber. But we digress.)
In the case that the original queen is still productive and the hive has simply become overcrowded, the colony’s only solution is to swarm — i.e., split and find a new home for the original queen and half the members of the colony.
In this instance, worker bees do two things to prepare for the swarm: 1) build queen cups, and 2) quit feeding the queen. The former lays the foundation to build new queen cells, and the latter is intended to lighten the queen up for her upcoming voyage.
The birth of our new queen — (shouldn’t we call her “princess” at this point?) — occurs shortly after the swarm has left. Immediately upon hatching, this firstborn queen is faced with a fateful decision: Take more bees from the colony on a voyage to build a new kingdom (this second swarm is called an “after swarm”), or remain in the hive and become the heiress to the throne. . .
[Cut scene.]
The Battle for the Throne
Remaining in the hive is the more common decision for a new queen.
This is where the drama picks up. Once her decision to stay has been made, the new queen must terminate any threats to her authority — She seeks out all other queen cells, chews into the cell, and kills her sisters with her reusable stinger.
[Side fact: A worker bee’s barbed stinger ruptures her lower abdomen once she tries to pull it out of the victim, resulting in her death. However, a queen bee’s stinger is unbarbed and can be used repeatedly.]
“What if two queens are born at the same time?” you ask.
It gets even better — In this event, the two queens will fight to the death. The victor, of course, becomes the new queen.
The Reign of Her Majesty
Shortly after the new queen succeeds to the throne, she embarks on several mating flights to collect the genetic material she needs to produce a new generation of bees.
The queen’s objective in these days is to collect semen from drone bees for reproduction down the road. She will store this semen in a special organ in her abdomen called a spermatheca.
The voyage typically takes the queen miles away to a drone congregating area. The virgin queen mates with around 10-20 drones to allow for enough genetic diversity throughout the colony. Too much of the same genetic makeup can leave a stock vulnerable to its weaknesses.
Upon the completion of these mating flights, the queen is now ready to settle into her duty of laying eggs in the beehive.
As the only one responsible for multiplying the colony, she becomes a national treasure who must be protected at all costs.
While laying the next generation of honey bees, the queen can control the sex of each offspring by determining whether the egg is fertilized or not. Fertilized eggs become female worker bees and queens, while unfertilized eggs become male drone bees.
While worker bees do not mate nor mature sexually, they can lay unfertilized eggs. These laying workers are often a colony’s last-ditch effort to survive in the absence of a queen.
Old Age
A good queen is one of the most productive insects in existence.
Her lifespan exceeds a typical worker’s by 20 times or more (2-3 years on average), and she may lay up to 1 million eggs before she dies.
As the queen’s productivity slows, the colony senses a reduction in her pheromone activity. This is their signal to begin preparations to raise a new queen.
And so the circle of life continues.
While she may be the royalty of the hive, the queen bee is solely concerned with the well-being of the overall colony. This collective mindset is one of the remarkable things that make honey bees exceptional social creatures, which humankind could learn a thing or two from.
All hail the Queen!