subject: Queen Honeybees Are Made – Not Born [print this page] Every bee hive needs a queen bee and the very survival of the hive depends on her. This one living queen bee that has just one job; laying eggs in each larvae cell in the hive.
So how come the queen bee can lay fertilized eggs and the female worker bees cannot? The difference is how the larvae are cared for.
When the larva is ready to come out, worker bees give the queen larva richer food. Royal jelly is given in copious amounts to the queen larva. This diet of royal jelly produces the majestic queen bee.
Essentially, all worker bees have the potential to become queen bees. It's just that they were not given the same diet as the queen bee, which is why they are sterile.
Here is an overview of how life begins for the typical queen bee:
1st day - The queen emerges from the sealed cell and begins looking for any other queen cells in the hive. Other queen cells are destroyed and the larvae are killed. This is done to prevent the bees from swarming or splitting the colony.
3rd day to 5th day - The queen bee learns to fly and leaves the hive for the first time.
1st week to 5th week - The virgin queen bee starts producing a type of pheromone and begins mating flights to mate with members of a drone assembly. Once the sperm has been successfully deposited, the male drone dies. After mating with drones, a new queen bee will start laying eggs regularly after the 2nd or 4th day.
Now, the queen continually produces another type of pheromone. This time the pheromone announces to the entire hive that a live, queen bee is present and is laying eggs. This pheromone actually signals worker bees to stop creating queen bee cells.
When a queen bee dies, the pheromone is no longer produced. This makes the honeybees restless and unhappy. Survival depends on having a queen. That means they have to create another queen, by using a fertilized egg laid by the former queen bee.
There are times when an older or sickly queen bee is replaced by a new queen bee that has been reared in the colony. A queen bee can serve her purpose for up to five years; after that, the colony will decide to replace the old queen.
When the young queen bee emerges, she has to fightthe old queen bee to the death. Once the old queen bee has been defeated, the new queen bee can take her rightful place as the center of the honeybee colony.
