Despite the fact that the queen bee is the only one in the hive, she plays a very important role in the life of the colony. The well-being and development of the colony depends on her. The death of the queen can lead to irreversible consequences and the death of the entire colony.
Laying eggs to raise new bees
The queen’s life’s job is to lay eggs from which new bees emerge. The queen spends all her time in the hive doing her job.
Different from worker bees and drones, which constantly fly out of the hive and return, the queen leaves the hive only on two occasions in her life:
– The unfertile queen flies out to mate to be fertilised by the sperm of the drones and to acquire the ability to lay fertilised eggs.
– When a bee colony swarms, the old queen flies out with part of the bees to create a new colony.
The bees specially prepare the cells in the honeycomb, clean and polish them so that the queen can concentrate only on her primary function. On average, a queen lays 2000 eggs per day. But there are record-breaking queens who can lay up to 3,500 eggs per day. The number of eggs laid per day depends on many factors: breed of bees, age, season, availability of nectar in nature, availability of free space for laying eggs, number of bees in the colony.
During the egg-laying process, the queen lowers her abdomen into a cell and swings the edges of the cell with hairs-sensors that are located on the abdomen. As a result, she lays a fertilised egg from which the worker bee or queen emerges. Here it all depends on the type of food that the worker bees choose.
If the cell is wide, the queen does not touch the edges of the cell with her hairy sensors and lays an unfertilised egg. From this egg the drone bees emerge.
Regulation of life in the hive
The queen not only lays eggs, but also fulfils an important function of uniting the bee colony into a whole. She is a kind of centre of attraction for all bees. Bees are attributed to this or that bee colony by means of her.
She does this with the help of a special pheromone called Queen Mandibular Pheromone, or QMP. While a functioning queen is present in the hive, the workers rub their bodies against her and spread her special odour, which tells the other insects that all is well, the life of the colony is not in danger, and brooding continues.
However, if the queen dies, the bees lose their purpose of existence and become anxious, gradually reducing the amount of food they bring, and less eagerly performing other necessary tasks: building honeycombs, brood rearing, guarding the hive, cleaning, etc.
The presence of this pheromone in the hive deters worker bees from laying unfertilised eggs. Unlike the queen, worker bees cannot lay fertilised eggs. But they can develop the function of laying unfertilised eggs in case of a long absence of a mate.
Bees identify their own bees from other bees by this odour. At the entrance to the hive there are guard bees, which determine who is allowed into the hive and who is not. In case of a long absence of a queen, this odour disappears and the colony’s defensive abilities are weakened. In such a case, a stronger colony may attack and rob them.
The importance of the queen bee in swarming
Swarming is a natural behaviour of bees. Bees increase their population by swarming. When bees are planning to swarm, i.e. from one bee colony, they split into two or more colony bees.
The queen plays an important role in this process. Before swarming, the bees raise new queens for themselves. And when a new queen appears, the old one immediately leaves the hive with part of the bees in search of a new place of residence. In other words, the presence of new queen bees in the colony is a key factor for the separation of the colony at swarming.
Beekeepers often use a technique to prevent swarming. They take new queens from the colony while they are still in their queen bee cells. In this way they delay the swarm’s exit or stop swarming completely.
Conclusion
We have considered that the importance of the queen in the life of a bee colony is very great. It is the breeding of new bees, the unification of the whole bee community into one whole, and participation in swarming. The queen bee is called this for a reason and absolutely deserves the name.
