The queen bee is the sole reproductive female in a honey bee colony, and her presence is the organizing principle for the entire hive. For a beekeeper, locating her is often a primary task during an inspection to confirm the colony’s health and productivity. While all members of the colony may initially look similar, the queen possesses distinct physical characteristics and behaviors that separate her from the thousands of workers and drones.
Physical Distinctions
The queen bee is the longest bee in the colony, typically measuring between 18 and 22 millimeters long, compared to the smaller workers who are usually 12 to 15 millimeters. The primary source of this difference is her abdomen, which is noticeably elongated and tapers to a point, giving it a characteristic “bullet shape.” This large abdomen houses her fully developed reproductive organs and often appears lighter, sometimes bronze or golden, than the workers’ bodies.
Her wings can offer another clue, as they appear disproportionately short relative to her body length. The wings only cover about two-thirds of her long abdomen, whereas a worker bee’s wings cover most of her body. The queen’s thorax and head also appear slightly smaller when compared to her body size than those of a worker bee. Unlike the worker bee, the queen possesses a smooth stinger, which she uses exclusively for fighting rival queens and not for defense against mammals.
Behavioral Cues
The queen’s movements within the hive are much slower and more deliberate than the busy, quick-moving worker bees. She rarely flies after her initial mating flight, instead focusing on her primary function of egg-laying. She is almost always found in the center of the hive, known as the brood nest, where the newest eggs and young larvae are located.
A major visual indicator of the queen’s location is the “retinue” or “court,” a circle of 6 to 10 worker bees that constantly attend to her. These attendant bees feed the queen through trophallaxis, groom her, and keep her clean, which facilitates the distribution of her pheromones throughout the colony. When she is laying eggs, she exhibits a highly organized pattern, depositing a single egg, centered, into the bottom of an open cell after inspecting it.
Practical Search Strategies
Locating the queen requires systematic inspection and patience, typically starting with the frames in the center of the brood box where egg-laying activity is highest. Beekeepers slowly remove one frame at a time, looking for the queen moving across the wax or surrounded by her retinue. If the queen is not immediately visible, finding fresh, standing eggs is the next best proof of her recent presence, as eggs hatch within three days.
Many beekeepers utilize a practice called marking to make future identification instantaneous and to track the queen’s age. A small, harmless dot of quick-drying paint is applied to the queen’s thorax, the middle section of her body. This mark adheres to an internationally recognized color code based on the year the queen was born.
The color system operates on a five-year rotation:
- White is used for years ending in 1 or 6.
- Yellow is used for years ending in 2 or 7.
- Red is used for years ending in 3 or 8.
- Green is used for years ending in 4 or 9.
- Blue is used for years ending in 5 or 0.
The contrast of the colored dot against the queen’s body makes her much easier to spot among the thousands of other bees.