The queen honey bee is fundamental to a colony’s survival and function. She is the only member of the hive capable of producing more female offspring to keep the colony going. The chemical pheromones produced by a queen bee impart a unique identity to each colony and its members. The presence of these pheromones also keeps the colony cohesive and orderly.

The Queen is the only sexually productive female in the colony and thus is the mother of all drones, workers, and future queens. Her capacity for laying eggs is outstanding; her daily output often exceeds 2000 eggs, the weight of which is equivalent to that of her own body

Anatomically, the queen is strikingly different from the drones and workers. Her body is long, with a much larger abdomen than a worker bee. Her mandibles, or jaws, contain sharp cutting teeth, whereas her offspring have toothless jaws. The queen bee lacks the working tools possessed by worker bees, such as pollen baskets, beeswax-secreting glands, and a well-developed honey sac.

There is normally only one Queen in the colony and once mated (in the first three weeks of her life) she stays inside the hive to lay eggs (except when she is swarming). She is genetically identical to workers but more developed due to the large consumption of Royal Jelly when she was in the larval stages.

The Queen can live up to five years, but is of very little value to the colony after three years because her laying capacity reduces with age. She is constantly fed and groomed by the worker bees and produces a pheromone called “Queen substance” that acts as a scent which informs the colony that a viable Queen is present. If a Queen is removed or lost from the colony workers will notice in less than thirty minutes and become very agitated and prepare to rear new Queens.

The queen honey bee is the largest bee in the colony and the only bee capable of laying eggs. A larva which is about 2 days old will be selected by the workers to be reared as the queen. She will emerge from her cell 11 days later to mate in flight with approximately 18 drone (male) bees.

During this mating, she receives several million sperm cells, which last her entire life span of nearly two years. Ten days after mating, the queen honey bee will begin to lay eggs. She is capable of laying up to 3,000 eggs in one day.

Step 1: Bees construct up to 20 wax queen cells.

Step 2: The current queen lays fertilized eggs in each queen cell (or in the case of the death of the queen, some existing eggs under three days old will be converted to queen cells by the method in the following step).

Step 3: The young nurse bees feed the young queen larvae with a special rich creamy food called Royal Jelly and extend the cell downwards until it is about 25mm in length.

Step 4: About nine days after laying, the first queen cell is sealed with a layer of wax.

Step 5: Assuming a new queen is being made because of an overpopulation within the hive, a large swarm, called the prime swarm, of bees leaves the hive, led by the older bees. The old queen gets starved so she is thinner and able to fly with the swarm and they go off scouting for a new place to create a colony. During their trip, the swarm will take frequent breaks to send out scouts to go search on their own. The scouts report back and from this information, they choose the best spot to go next until they finally settle on an optimal location.

Step 6: Back in the hive, about a week later, the first of the new queens will leave her cell. The new queen will then either choose to locate and kill her sister potential queens by stinging them through the wax wall of their cells or she will take a small swarm and go start a new hive somewhere, particularly if the hive is still somewhat crowded. If she leaves, then the next to emerge from her cell will make the same decision. Eventually one will decide to stay

Step 7: The young queen flies around and orients herself to her new surroundings.

Step 8: The queen will take several mating flights and will mate with up to 20 male bees called drones; the drones will die after mating.

Step 9: A few days later, the mated queen will begin to lay fertilized eggs at a rate of about 2000 per day. Fertilized eggs become female worker bees. Unfertilized eggs get fertilized by male drones and become new drones. At any given time in a healthy hive, there is 1 queen bee, up to 40,000 or so female worker bees, and a few hundred male drones.

Step 10: This queen will stay with the colony for at least a year until a large enough swarm is available to go start a new colony somewhere else. Though the worker bees only live 40 or so days and drone bees die in mating or are evicted from the hive in the autumn to conserve food as they do no actual work, the queen bee can live up to 5 years.