Queen Bees
So the artificial swarm seems to be successful so far. The parent hive went crazy rearing multiple queen cells even though we left them with one, we found around 8 or 9! So what’s the difference between the queen bee and all the rest?
The queen is bigger and less hairy. She has a long abdomen due to being the only fertilised female bee in the hive meaning she has room for large ovaries. A queen honey bee can lay approximately 800,000 eggs in her lifetime! The queen lives longer than all the other bees, around 4 years or so.
Her royal highness only leaves the hive to mate or swarm other than that she stays indoors (she’s a pro at lockdown!) Other bees feed and groom her so she can concentrate on laying eggs. The image given is the queen is in charge, in reality it’s the workers in charge, if the queen goes off lay, is damaged or old they will supersede her and create a new one. They run out of room? It’s the workers who initiate swarming by thinning her down and creating another queen- she’s almost a prisoner made to lay eggs all her life but i find her marvellous!
Queens are raised in larger cells as they are bigger and these are called queen cells. They are fed royal jelly which means their ovaries develop fully so they can function as laying queens. A queen bee is ready in just 21days, after a few days she’ll go on a mating flight and then return to the hive to start laying eggs.
The queen is bigger and less hairy. She has a long abdomen due to being the only fertilised female bee in the hive meaning she has room for large ovaries. A queen honey bee can lay approximately 800,000 eggs in her lifetime! The queen lives longer than all the other bees, around 4 years or so.
Her royal highness only leaves the hive to mate or swarm other than that she stays indoors (she’s a pro at lockdown!) Other bees feed and groom her so she can concentrate on laying eggs. The image given is the queen is in charge, in reality it’s the workers in charge, if the queen goes off lay, is damaged or old they will supersede her and create a new one. They run out of room? It’s the workers who initiate swarming by thinning her down and creating another queen- she’s almost a prisoner made to lay eggs all her life but i find her marvellous!
Queens are raised in larger cells as they are bigger and these are called queen cells. They are fed royal jelly which means their ovaries develop fully so they can function as laying queens. A queen bee is ready in just 21days, after a few days she’ll go on a mating flight and then return to the hive to start laying eggs.
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| Queen cells at the bottom of the frame |
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