THE QUEEN BEE

​The Queen Bee
 
Someone has to keep the house in order. So, who is it, who keeps order in the Queendom? Wow, did I just make up a word and, ask two questions in a row, why not? This blog is my world! But in her house the adult female bee, who by the way, is the only bee who mates and gives birth to workers, rule. She is known as the Queen Bee. The queen is selected by worker bees from larvae and developed being specially fed in order to be, get this, sexually mature.   
 
The queen bee can produce up to 2,000 eggs per day, thus a strong hive can become constricted relative to space. A space problem could arrive if two queens are in the same hive, here the old would leave with half the hive. Not good! A main difference in the feeding of a worker bee and the queen is the queen bee is feed royal jelly her entire life. The worker bees are fed royal jelly for the first two days in their larvae stage. But, it is not the so-called royal jelly that makes a queen. Actually it’s the opposite, what’s not in her diet. The worker bees are feed pollen and honey, however, the potential queen bee is not fed these foods. By not being fed pollen and honey in her new born stages she gains, her royal status. 

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​The queen bee grows much longer that a worker bee, and lives about 40 times longer in a life of birthing. She is the heart and soul of the hive, without her all others would perish. That statement includes us, for without the queen bee no other honey bee will live. Without the honey bee no crosspollination happens; that means no food on the planet. The other responsibility of the queen is the production of a chemical (pheromones) that regulate hive unity. Also, some people believe that the queen bee has no stinger, but she does. However, she rarely uses it except in most cases to kill her rival. Yep, you got it, another queen.
 
The queen bee’s fertilized eggs are the hive new worker bees; yes, many thousands of sisters working in perfect unison. Her unfertilized eggs develop into drones; these are the male bees. Before laying her egg, the queen will inspect the cell before placing her lower abdomen in it to lay. It must be clean. Still, the queen can’t take care of her own needs and must be cared for by the nurse and worker bees. After all, she is a queen!

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