The queen bee occupies the central place in the bee colony, she carries on the colony of bees – this is her life’s work. If a colony has no queen, it will die. The queen also has other important functions. We will discuss these facts below.
Who is the queen bee?
The queen bee is a bee that is very different from the worker bees. Her role in the life of the hive is quite different. There is a division of duties among the bees, which are ultimately aimed at fulfilling one important goal – the complete sustenance of the bee family.
The basic task of the queen bee is to reproduce by laying eggs from which new bees will emerge.
Fertilisation of the queen
The queen reaches maturity about a week after birth. She then leaves the hive on a warm, sunny day in search of drones. By the time she returns home, she has grown in size, loses her ability to fly and begins to lay eggs.
The queen is fertilised by a male bee only once in her life, so this is enough for her to stay in the hive permanently, not fly out and lay eggs from which larvae develop.
In case of bad weather, the queen may not be fertilised. In this case she will lay eggs, but only drones will develop from them.
Laying eggs
The queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day. But it can be more. It depends on the age and breed of the queen. The total weight of eggs laid per day can be more than the weight of the queen’s body. This unusual phenomenon, based on royal jelly nutrition, is the basis for the assumption that royal jelly can have the same positive effect on the human body.
During the rapid egg-laying period, the queen does not even have time to eat the food in the honey cells. Therefore, all her nutrition is provided by 8 to 10 worker bees that are constantly with her.
The worker bees take care of the queen all the time: they clean her, feed her highly nutritious food (royal jelly). At the same time, the number of worker bees is not constant and is renewed.
Life expectancy
Compared to other bees, the queen lives long enough – up to about 5 years (which is 20-30 times longer than the lifespan of worker bees), but at 3 years old she is already old and lays fewer eggs. For this reason, beekeepers remove the old queen from the hive and replace her with a young one.
Bees replace the queen
In their natural habitat, bees themselves replace the old queen with a young one. First, they build large queen cells that use 100 times more wax than a normal cell. This is where the eggs are laid. When the larvae emerge, the nurse bees fill half the cell space with royal jelly. When the larva becomes a queen, the old queen is removed by the bees.
Royal Jelly
The most valuable product produced by beekeepers is royal jelly, a secretion produced by glands in the throat and upper jaw of bees. Royal jelly is necessary for the successful nourishment of the larvae and the queen. Within 5 days, the larva develops so rapidly that it increases in size by a factor of 1600.
Royal jelly is a biostimulant because it contains more than 100 microelements, vitamins (groups B, C, H), essential amino acids and folic acid.
It has a bactericidal effect and is therefore used in the treatment of infections and inflammations.
Bee queen competition
Bee queens are so competitive that they will kill each other if they happen to be in the same hive. As a result, only one remains until she is replaced by another. And so on and so forth.
When a queen dies in a colony, the bees make queen cells to raise a new one. The queen that appears first finds other queen cells, chews through them and kills all the competitors. To do this, the queen uses a stinger that can be used many times because, unlike the stings of worker bees, it has no sharp edges.
If two queens appear at the same time, they will fight until only one survives.
A prisoner in her own kingdom
Although the life of a colony depends on the queen bee, she spends her entire life in a dark hive. She only comes out once, when she is young, to look for drones to fertilise. And if she is lucky, she spends the rest of her life breeding.
There is another case when the queen can leave the hive. This case is swarming. In this case the old queen flies with a part of the bees to a new place. There she continues her egg-laying and reproductive activities.
Queen bee and pheromones
Smell plays an important role in the life of bees – it is a way of communicating, where signals are perceived and the amount of light or distance is not so important. Odours provide bees with the information they need to maintain their life and behaviour.
Substances secreted by bees that have an information function are called pheromones. Pheromones are substances secreted by an organism into the environment that elicit a specific response in individuals of a similar biological species.
Bee pheromones, like those of many insects, contain a large number of components. They are used by the drones to find the queen when she flies out to find a male, and they also help them to dominate. The life of bees is governed by a caste system based on pheromone communication. The queen and worker bees are both female, but only the queen’s reproductive organs are mature enough.
If a colony is left without a queen for any reason, this has a negative effect on both the flying activity of the whole colony and the building activity of the worker bees. Therefore, the behavioural, physiological and economic characteristics of bees depend on queen pheromones.
Age of the queen
An important factor to consider in beekeeping is the age of the queen bee, as it affects the number of eggs she lays. It has been found that the queen bee lays the largest number of eggs in the first 2 years of her life; if she is allowed to stay in the hive for a longer period of time, it will result in a large number of unfertilised eggs, from which the drones will emerge.
This indicator is taken into account both for the purposes of bee breeding and to influence the efficiency of honey production. All these points are closely related.
For example, the age of the queen has an impact on the well-being of the entire colony: a sufficient number and level of efficiency of worker bees that collect honey and other derivatives of this product.
Research has shown that the age of the queen also has an impact on the welfare of the hive. When a family of bees had a one-year-old queen, the whole colony was healthy, strong and able to work after hibernation, in contrast to colonies where the queen was more than two years old.
Hives in which a one-year-old queen spent the winter produce on average 20% less honey than colonies with an older queen. Therefore, colonies with a one-year-old queen are more productive in honey production, they are better prepared for winter and bee mortality during hibernation is lower.
Breeding peculiarities
In beekeeping, only artificial insemination allows complete control of the mating process between the queen and the drones. This makes it possible to multiply the results of selection work by obtaining material with the necessary breeding characteristics.
In the practice of breeding new bee species by crossing certain breeds, this method is the most effective. Finally, by using artificial insemination, beekeepers solve one of the main problems – reducing the influence of weather conditions on the process of queen fertilisation.
Genetic purity of bees requires careful selection of producer pairs, which is achieved in two ways:
– Control of bee mating in natural conditions;
– Instrumental insemination of infertile queens.
Conclusion
So, the life of a queen bee has both advantages and very challenging moments. On the one hand, she receives a great deal of attention from both her relatives and the beekeepers, but on the other hand, she has the unenviable task of spending her life laying eggs. But that’s her life.