The common understanding of a bee colony often centers on a single queen bee. This perception holds true for many well-known bee species, particularly honeybees, where the queen maintains a singular, dominant role. While a lone queen is the typical arrangement for honeybee colonies, specific, temporary circumstances can lead to multiple queens coexisting. Furthermore, in other bee species, having multiple queens is a natural and stable aspect of their social organization, challenging the notion of a universally singular queen.
The Queen’s Singular Role
In a honeybee colony, the queen bee plays a central role. She is primarily responsible for laying all the eggs, ensuring the continuous replenishment of the worker bee population. This is essential for the colony’s survival and growth. Beyond reproduction, the queen produces chemical signals, known as pheromones. Worker bees distribute these pheromones throughout the hive, signaling the queen’s presence and regulating colony behaviors.
The queen’s pheromones also suppress the reproductive development of worker bees, preventing them from laying eggs. This chemical control ensures the queen remains the sole reproductive female, maintaining a structured division of labor. A healthy, actively laying queen with strong pheromone production is fundamental for colony stability and productivity.
Temporary Coexistence of Queens
While a single queen typically governs a honeybee colony, specific, often short-lived, situations allow multiple queens to exist simultaneously. One scenario occurs during swarming, the natural reproductive process of a bee colony. Before a swarm departs, the colony prepares new queen cells, and several virgin queens may emerge. The original mother queen then leaves with a portion of worker bees, while newly emerged virgin queens may briefly coexist within the original hive. These virgin queens will eventually compete until only one remains to head the colony.
Another instance of temporary multi-queen presence is during supersedure, a process where a colony replaces an old or failing queen. Worker bees rear new queens while the old queen is still present and often continues laying eggs. This overlap allows for a smooth transition, ensuring the colony is not queenless. Once the new queen successfully mates and begins laying, the old queen is typically eliminated by the workers.
When Multiple Queens Are the Norm
Beyond honeybees, some bee species naturally maintain colonies with multiple laying queens as a stable part of their social structure. Stingless bees (Meliponini), predominantly found in tropical and subtropical regions, are a prime example of this polygynous arrangement. Many species of stingless bees can have several fertile queens coexisting and actively laying eggs within a single nest.
This multi-queen system in stingless bees reflects different social dynamics. While a single queen often dominates egg-laying in some species, others exhibit a more communal reproductive effort. The ability of stingless bee colonies to support multiple queens allows for potentially larger and more resilient colonies.
Identifying Different Queen-like Bees
Understanding colony dynamics requires differentiating between a true queen and other queen-like or egg-laying individuals. Virgin queens are newly emerged females that have not yet mated. They are typically smaller and more agile than mated, laying queens, often moving quickly across the comb. While queens by caste, they are not yet fully functional in terms of reproduction as they can only lay unfertilized eggs that develop into drones until they mate.
Laying workers are another group that can be mistaken for queens, particularly in queenless honeybee colonies. In the absence of a queen and her pheromones, some worker bees can develop their ovaries and begin laying eggs. However, these eggs are unfertilized and will only develop into male drones. Laying workers often lay multiple eggs in a single cell, and their egg-laying patterns are often scattered and unorganized, unlike the precise pattern of a queen. They do not produce the queen pheromones necessary for colony cohesion or the suppression of other workers’ ovaries.