The best queens emerge from replacement queen cells. As the
young queen larva pupates with her head down, the workers
cap the cell with beeswax. When ready to emerge, she will
chew a circular cut around the cap of her cell. Often the
cap swings open when most of the cut is made, so as to
appear like a hinged lid. Queen cells that are opened on
the side indicate that the virgin queen was likely killed
by a rival.
When the young queens are ready to emerge, they often begin
to "pipe", a shrill peeping, which is thought to be a
challenge to other emerged or ready-to-emerge virgins.
Unless the workers restrain them, emerged virgin queens
will quickly find and kill rivals. During the swarm season,
workers may separate young queens, thus keeping several
alive at once for longer than a brief period. The extra
queens may go with swarms or afterswarms to sort out their
survival in a new home. The separation of virgin queens may
also be an extra precaution for hive survival. In the time
leading up to a swarm, the old queen will stop laying eggs
several days before she leaves with the prime swarm.
Usually, there are several maturing queen cells in the
remaining hive. In case a virgin queen does not come back
from a nuptial flight the bees may hold back a standby. A
queenless hive with larvae older than 4 days is not able to
create an emergency queen.
Reproduction
When one queen survives in a colony, she will go out on a
sunny, warm day to mate with 12-15 drones. She has only a
limited time to mate, and if she is unable to fly because
of bad weather and remains unmated, she will become a
"drone layer." Drone-laying queens usually mean the death
of the colony, because the workers have no fertilized
(female) larvae from which to raise a replacement. If there
is a deficit of drones, or the weather provides too brief a
window for full mating, the queen may be able to function
briefly, laying fertilized eggs for a few weeks or months,
until she runs out of sperm cells and ceases laying
fertilized eggs much sooner than the normal 2-3 year life
span of queens.
If workers realize their queen is failing, and the weather
will allow a replacement to be raised and mated, the bees
can "supersede" the queen. However, supersedure will fail
in winter in colder climates because there are no drones
and the queens cannot fly to mate.
A special, rare case of reproduction is thelytoky: the
reproduction of female workers or queens by laying worker
bees. Thelytoky occurs in the Cape bee, Apis mellifera
capensis, and has been found in other strains at very low
frequency.
Daily life for the
queen
Although the name might imply it, a queen has no control
over the hive. Her sole function is to serve as the
reproducer; she is an "egg laying machine." A good queen of
quality stock, well reared with good nutrition and well
mated, can lay about 2,000 eggs per day during the spring
build-up and live for two or more years. She lays her own
weight in eggs every couple of hours and is continuously
surrounded by young worker attendants, who meet her every
need, giving her feed and disposing of her waste. They also
lick her body for the pheromones called queen substance,
that is needed to stop worker bees from laying eggs of
their own.
Because the social structure is so complex and fixed, a
honeybee colony can be thought of as a single organism, and
the individual bees as simply cells of the organism; they
cannot survive on their own. The queen is responsible for
the reproduction of the "cells", but also is responsible
through her own pheromone production for the reproduction
of the whole colony. This usually takes place in the spring
and is called swarming.
Supersedure
Supersedure is the process by which an old queen bee is
replaced by a new queen. Supersedure will occur naturally
or can be induced. Natural supersedure may be initiated due
to old age of a queen or a diseased or failing queen. As
the queen ages her pheromone output diminishes. Nosema
disease is also implicated in queen supersedure.
The natural process starts when the bees make supersedure
cells to replace a laying queen. In a beehive the location
of supersedure cells differ from swarm cells. Supersedure
cells rarely hang from the bottom of a frame but can be
found in the center of the brood nest.
Supersedure may be forced by a beekeeper. By simply
clipping off one of the middle or posterior legs from the
resident queen she will be unable to properly place her
eggs at the bottom of the brood cell. The workers will
detect this and will then rear replacement queens. When a
new queen is available the workers will kill the reigning
queen. The workers form a warming ball around the queen and
so kill her by overheating - this is called by beekeepers
"balling the queen", and can be a problem when introducing
a new queen to a hive. This overheating method is also used
to kill large predatory wasps (e.g. the Asian giant hornet)
that enter the hive in search of brood. Forced supersedure
should only be done when drones are available to inseminate
the new queen. The emerging virgin queen may not survive
one of her several nuptual flights which may result in a
queenless hive. Monitoring for a laying queen is
recommended when forcing a queen supersedure.
Virgin queen
bee
A virgin queen is a queen bee that has not mated with a
drone. Virgins are intermediate in size between workers and
mated, laying queens, and are much more active than the
latter. They are hard to spot while inspecting a frame,
because they run across the comb, climbing over worker bees
if necessary, and may even take flight if sufficiently
disturbed. Virgin queens can often be found clinging to the
walls or corners of a hive during inspections.
Virgin queens appear to have little queen pheromone and
often do not appear to be recognized as queens by the
workers. A virgin queen in her first few hours after
emergence can be placed into the entrance of any queenless
hive or nuc and acceptance is usually very good, whereas a
mated queen is usually recognized as a stranger and runs a
high risk of being killed by the older workers.
Virgins will quickly find and kill (by stinging) any other
emerged virgin queen (or be dispatched themselves), as well
as any unemerged queens. She locates them by piping. An
empty queen cell will show whether the queen emerged
normally (open on the tip) or whether it was torn down from
the side and its queen killed by another.
When a colony is preparing to swarm, the workers may
prevent virgins from fighting and one or several virgins
may go with the swarm while other virgins stay behind with
the remnant of the hive. As many as 21 virgin queens have
been counted in a single large swarm. When the swarm
settles into a new home, the virgins will then resume
normal behavior and fight to the death until only one
remains. The old queen will usually be allowed to live and
continue laying, but within a couple weeks she will
disappear and the former virgin, now mated, will take her
place.
The information on this page has been
reproduced from www.wikipedia.com. Copyright
acknowledged.