The Queen – Ruler of the Honey Bee Hive … or is she?

A Carniolan (black) queen bee and her worker bee attendants                             Photo courtesy of MortonMolyneux©2014

With the worker bees performing a multitude of tasks to keep the hive running, and the drones doing their part to ensure the survival of the species, there are only two jobs left, and they both belong to the largest bee in the hive, the queen honey bee.

Her first job is to prevent the creation of another queen, and her second, is to create all those workers and drones.

How does she ensure she own survival?

A queen honey bee releases pheromones (smell) that the worker bees distribute from bee to bee throughout the hive on their antenna. As long as the queen’s pheromones are strong, and able to reach all the bees in the hive, her position remains secure.

One queen 60,000 bees!

Creating all the other bees in the hive is her full-time job! A honey bee hive can have easily, at the peak of the nectar flow, have 60,000 bees or more. That’s a lot of eggs to lay!

This frame shows capped worker bee cells

A queen honey bee is capable of laying (have your calculator ready!) up to 2000 eggs a day! Given she has a lifespan of three to five years … that makes for an incredible amount of workers and drones! A queen bee’s egg-laying rate is directly related to the nectar flow. Since here, in the Northern Hemisphere, there is no nectar flow during the winter months, queens take a well-deserved winter vacation from egg laying.

Who rules the bee hive?

It isn’t the queen bee. A bee hive is a complex, democratic society, run almost exclusively by the worker bees. They make collective decisions to ensure the survival of the colony.

Who gets to be queen?

Remember those pheromones? As a queen ages, her pheromones become weaker and this will signal the workers that a new queen is required.

Three gold-colored 'balls' the beginning of queen cells

Once this decision is collectively made, the worker bees choose five to ten freshly laid  fertilized eggs and move them to larger, newly built queen cells. This moving of eggs happens within three days of a egg being laid. A queen bee starts her life exactly like a worker bee, from a fertilized egg.

It is after the egg has hatched into a larva that things change. While the worker bee larva is fed a diet of bee bread (honey and pollen) the queen bee larva will continue on a steady, rich diet of royal jelly. This is a true case of ‘you are what you eat!’

This diet of royal jelly is what creates a queen bee. On the ninth day, the queen cells will be capped, just like a worker bee cell. But, unlike a worker who remains another 12 days in pupa stage, a queen bee only requires 7 or 8 days to finish developing and hatch from her cell.

There can be only one

Upon hatching, her responsibilities start immediately. The first task on her agenda is to track down and kill any and all new queens in the hive. The workers, having set this chain of events in motion, leave the new queen to the task at hand.

She will start by emitting a ‘piping’ sound. All the other new queens in the hive are conditioned to respond … even if they have not yet hatched.

The queen that hatches first will track down the other ‘piping’ queen cells, rips them open, and stings the occupant. As brutal as this sounds, nature is insuring the survival of one queen bee.

If two queens hatch, they will eventually meet, and a fight ensues. With stingers at the ready, and a fight to the death, there is always the chance they both might die. This would leave the hive without a queen bee at all, especially if the original queen is no longer in residence. That spells doom and the death of the colony is imminent.

 The new reigning queen bee

Our queen is given a few days to survey her new kingdom. Before she starts her formal reign as queen bee of a prosperous honey bee hive, she must take a single mating flight. This may be the only time she will leave the hive. This flight will take place toward the end of her first week of life. During a mating flight, she will fly 3000 or so feet in the air, and mate with 10 to 15 drones. She will (hopefully) return safely to her hive. She is now equipped to lay eggs for the rest of her life. This may be anywhere in the vicinity of 1,800,000 to 3,000,000 in her lifetime. That’s amazing!!!

As the only honey bee in the hive who can reproduce, this is her sole focus. It is left up to the myriad of worker bees to feed her, groom her, and look after all the eggs she lays.

An Italian (orange) queen surrounded by her workers

It is her responsibility alone to ensure there are enough workers in her hive to produce an adequate amount of honey to sustain the bees living within. She also sets the balance of worker bees to drones (approximately 60,000 workers to 500 drones.) 

Although the queen bee does not necessarily run the hive, she is definitely the heart of it. Without their queen the workers have no way to sustain the population. Without the worker bees to feed and groom her, the queen bee cannot survive.

A honey bee hive in perfect harmony, is an example of Mother Nature doing exactly what she does best.