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A queen honey bee is the single reproductive female in a colony, developing from a fertilized egg but becoming a queen only because she is fed royal jelly throughout her larval stage, which triggers full reproductive development. She is larger than workers, lives far longer, and is the mother of nearly all bees in the hive.
She begins life when workers select a larva and raise it in a vertically oriented queen cell, feeding it exclusively on royal jelly. After pupation, she emerges around day 15–17 and soon takes mating flights, typically mating with 12–15 drones and storing up to six million sperm in her spermatheca. This stored sperm allows her to fertilize eggs for the rest of her life, usually two to five years.
Her primary role is egg‑laying. A strong queen can lay 1,500–3,000 eggs per day during peak season, often more than her own body weight. She controls the sex of each egg: fertilized eggs become female workers or potential queens, while unfertilized eggs become male drones.
She also governs the colony chemically. Her mandibular pheromone keeps workers coordinated, suppresses their ability to reproduce, stabilizes colony behaviour, and signals her health. When her pheromone output declines with age or illness, workers begin raising replacement queens in a process called supersedure.
A queen's presence shapes the entire hive's social order, productivity, and survival. Without her, workers quickly attempt to raise an emergency queen, but these are usually smaller and less prolific than queens raised under normal conditions.
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