The honey bee queen is the central figure in a honey bee colony. As the sole reproductive female, her existence is linked to the hive’s growth and continuation. She is the mother of nearly all its inhabitants, a status that sets her apart from thousands of other bees. Her presence and health dictate the colony’s stability and productivity.
The Queen’s Role in the Hive
A mated queen has two principal responsibilities: laying eggs and producing chemical signals. During peak season, she can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day, a mass that can exceed her own body weight. Before depositing an egg, she inspects each honeycomb cell to ensure it is clean. She also uses her legs to measure the cell’s diameter, laying a fertilized female egg in a worker cell or an unfertilized male egg in a drone cell.
Her second role is as the hive’s chemical unifier. The queen secretes a blend of pheromones, with the Queen Mandibular Pheromone (QMP) being the most prominent. This chemical signature is passed among worker bees through grooming and food sharing. The QMP signals the queen’s presence and health, maintains social cohesion, and suppresses the ovarian development of worker bees. Physically, her elongated abdomen is specialized for egg-laying, and unlike worker bees, her stinger is smooth and not barbed.
How a Queen Bee is Made
Every female bee in a hive begins as a fertilized egg with the potential to become a queen. The destiny of a larva is not determined by genetics but by its diet. When a colony needs a new queen, worker bees select several young female larvae. These chosen larvae are moved into specially constructed, vertical cells that resemble peanuts in shape, known as queen cells.
From the moment they are selected, these larvae are fed an exclusive diet of royal jelly. This milky-white substance is secreted from glands on the heads of young worker bees and is rich in proteins that trigger the developmental changes to become a queen. In contrast, larvae destined to become workers are fed royal jelly for only the first few days before being switched to a diet of honey and pollen.
The Queen’s Mating Flight
Shortly after emerging from her cell, within five to twelve days, the virgin queen undertakes a journey known as the nuptial or mating flight. She leaves the hive to mate for the only time in her life, aside from swarming. The queen flies to a drone congregation area (DCA), an aerial space where thousands of drones from various nearby colonies gather.
She mates with multiple drones in mid-air to ensure genetic diversity within her offspring. She can mate with 10 to 20 drones during one or more of these flights. The sperm she collects is stored in an organ called the spermatheca and must last her entire reproductive life. A poorly mated queen cannot lay the fertilized eggs required to produce worker bees, jeopardizing the colony’s survival.
Queen Succession and Hive Survival
A queen bee’s reign lasts between two and five years. As she ages, her egg-laying rate declines and her pheromone output diminishes, signaling to the colony that a replacement is needed. The colony manages this transition through two processes: supersedure and swarming. Supersedure is the replacement of a failing queen, where workers raise a new queen while the old one is often still alive. The new queen will eventually take over, sometimes killing her predecessor.
Swarming is a method of colony reproduction. When a colony becomes large, the hive prepares to split. The existing queen leaves with roughly half of the worker bees to establish a new colony. Before she departs, workers prepare queen cells to ensure a successor is ready to head the original hive. These strategies ensure the colony’s continuity, balancing the queen’s life cycle with the hive’s survival.