How Does a Bee Become a Queen Bee?

The Queen's Job

A hive of bees contains one queen bee--she is larger than all the other bees in the colony. While the worker bees and drone bees care for the unborn bee larvae or harvest pollen to produce honey, the queen bee's job is to lay eggs continuously. After laying the eggs, she destroys any potential queens before they can hatch, although occasionally one does hatch and the two queens then fight for dominance.

A New Queen

The queen bee spends her entire life in the hive, laying as many as 200,000 eggs per year. Her sole purpose is to increase the population of the hive; when her ability to lay eggs slows, the worker bees detect the problem and they will begin to rear new potential queen bees to ensure the continuation of the hive.

The Process

The worker bees select potential queen eggs and feed them royal jelly, a highly nutritious substance that encourages vigorous growth and health. Royal jelly transforms an egg into a large queen bee. If the current queen bee does not destroy a potential queen egg and it hatches, the young female will challenge the old queen in a fight to the death.

Since the current queen lays up to 1,500 eggs per day, if she dies unexpectedly, the rest of the hive will choose to feed and rear several potential queen eggs in an attempt to ensure that another queen is soon in place.

When the new potential queen bees emerge from their cells, their first duty is to fight for the right to be the queen.

Once a new queen is established, she will mate with approximately a dozen drone bees over a period of days and then she will never mate again. A queen bee has the potential to lay eggs for up to seven years.

References

• Bees and Beekeeping