The queen bee is the single, reproductive female within a honey bee colony, functioning as the sole mother of thousands of individuals. Her primary responsibility is ensuring the continuity and growth of the colony by laying eggs continuously. As the only fully developed reproductive female, her presence dictates the behavior and future of the entire social structure. She acts as a reproductive engine and a source of chemical control for the population, rather than a ruler in the human sense.
Physical Identification and Unique Development
The queen bee is easily distinguishable from her worker and drone counterparts. She possesses a longer, more tapered abdomen, making her the largest bee in the colony. Unlike the barbed stinger of the worker bee, the queen’s stinger is smooth, allowing her to sting repeatedly without self-destruction, a weapon she reserves for rival queens.
The queen is genetically identical to every female worker bee in the hive. Her unique destiny is determined purely by nutrition during the larval stage, a phenomenon called caste determination. Larvae chosen to become queens are fed an exclusive, copious diet of royal jelly throughout their entire development. This sustained, high-quality diet fully activates her reproductive organs, transforming the genetically female larva into a fertile queen in just 16 days. Conversely, worker larvae are switched to a diet of pollen and honey after the first few days, resulting in sterile females with underdeveloped ovaries.
Reproductive Role and Caste Determination
The queen’s reproductive capacity begins with a series of mating trips known as the nuptial flight. During these flights, the virgin queen leaves the hive to mate with multiple male drones from other colonies in mid-air, a process called polyandry. She collects and stores all the sperm she will need for her reproductive life—which can last up to five years—in a specialized internal organ called the spermatheca.
Once mated, the queen returns to the hive and begins prolific egg-laying, often depositing up to 2,000 eggs per day during the peak season. She determines the sex and caste of her offspring by controlling fertilization. As an egg passes down her oviduct, she can choose to release stored sperm from her spermatheca to fertilize it. Fertilized eggs develop into diploid females, which become either worker bees or new queens. Unfertilized eggs are laid in larger cells and develop into haploid males, known as drones.
Colony Governance Through Pheromones
The queen’s influence over the colony is chemical, maintained through a complex blend of compounds known collectively as “queen substance.” The primary component is the Queen Mandibular Pheromone (QMP), secreted from her mandibular glands. This chemical signal is constantly transferred throughout the hive by the workers who attend to her, feeding and grooming her in a close circle known as the “retinue.”
The pheromone acts as a silent communication system, regulating the physiology and behavior of the entire colony. One significant effect is the suppression of worker bee ovaries, ensuring female workers remain sterile and focused on hive duties. A robust QMP signal also promotes collective behaviors, such as maintaining hive cohesion, stimulating foraging activity, and encouraging comb construction. When the queen ages or her health declines, QMP production weakens, alerting the workers that her productivity is failing.
Queen Succession and Swarming
The decline of the queen’s pheromone signal or egg-laying rate triggers the colony to initiate a replacement process called supersedure. Workers quietly raise a few new queens from young larvae to replace the failing mother, often without the old queen leaving the hive. The new queen then takes over, sometimes killing the old queen in the process.
Swarming is the natural method of colony reproduction. It is triggered by hive overcrowding and a subsequent drop in pheromone concentration among the workers. Workers reduce the queen’s food intake to slim her down for flight. The old queen then departs with a large portion of the adult worker population to find a new home, leaving behind developing queen cells. The first virgin queen to emerge will either destroy the other queen cells or fight any newly emerged virgins, ensuring the colony is ruled by a single reproductive female.