subject: Bee Behavior - The Life Of A Queen [print this page] Bee Behavior - The Life Of A Queen Bee Behavior - The Life Of A Queen
A beekeeper should know how his bees behave. He should examine the hive every two weeks if his queen is laying eggs. There is only one queen in the colony and as a mother of the colony she has two purpose in life. Her purpose is to lay eggs and secretes pheromones that holds colony together.
A queen starts out just like a worker, as fertilized female egg. To make this female develop into a queen, workers feed the larva a diet of pure royal jelly. An extension is built onto the cell to accommodate the queen's longer abdomen. This queen cell looks a little like a peanut embedded in the comb.
A queen emerges earlier than a worker - after about eighteen days. Typically, the workers in a queen-less hive will raise several queens. Normally, the first to emerge will destroy the cells of the others. If two queens emerge at the same time, they will fight to the death. A few days after emergence, the virgin queen makes a series of mating flights. She mates with drones in the air - as many as twenty or thirty matings may be needed to fill her spermatheca or sperm sac. Once she begins laying, she never mates again; the sperm stored in her body has to last her entire lifetime, during which she may lay as many as two thousand eggs per day. When a queen runs out of sperm, she becomes a "drone layer" because unfertilized eggs develop into drones.
Laying queens will usually be found at the end or near the comb containing eggs in the hive. A queen will live for three to five years but normally, she will last only for two years.
Bee behavior should be fully understood when starting to take up beekeeping. For more information on bee behavior, visitwww.ModernBeekeeping.com
