The queen bee is the single reproductive female in a honeybee colony. Finding her among the tens of thousands of worker bees can be challenging, as they all share a similar basic body plan. Identifying the queen requires understanding the specific physical and behavioral markers that distinguish her from the rest of the colony.
Distinct Physical Characteristics
The queen is noticeably the largest bee in the colony, typically measuring between 18 to 22 millimeters long. Much of this length comes from her long, tapered abdomen, which extends well past the tips of her folded wings. This elongated shape is a direct result of her reproductive function, as the abdomen houses her fully developed ovaries.
Compared to the abdomen, the queen’s head and thorax appear relatively smaller than those of the other castes. Unlike worker bees, she lacks specialized structures used for hive maintenance and foraging, such as pollen baskets or wax glands. She possesses a smooth stinger used only for fighting and dispatching rival queens, unlike the barbed stinger of the worker bee used for defense.
Behavioral Indicators of Her Presence
The queen’s actions and location within the hive offer strong clues to her identity. She moves with a slow, deliberate pace across the comb, contrasting with the hurried motion of the workers. A clear sign is the “retinue,” a circle of six to ten young worker bees that constantly surrounds her.
These attendant workers feed and groom the queen, helping spread her pheromones throughout the colony. She is almost always found in the brood nest area, the heart of the hive where eggs and larvae are developing. Her primary job is egg-laying, which she does in a consistent, compact pattern, depositing a single egg precisely at the bottom center of an empty cell.
Comparing the Queen, Worker, and Drone
Distinguishing the queen requires differentiating her from both the female worker bees and the male drones. Worker bees are the smallest and most slender of the three castes, with a shorter, more compact abdomen and specialized features like pollen baskets. They are the most numerous members of the colony, performing all tasks from foraging to hive defense.
Drones, the male bees, are intermediate in length but possess a noticeably bulky, barrel-shaped body and a blunt, rounded abdomen. A striking feature of the drone is its enormous compound eyes, which meet at the top of its head, giving it superior vision for locating a queen during mating flights.