The queen bee and its characteristics

Brief review of the characteristics of queen bees

Queen bees can live up to 6 years, their average life being 3 years. Keep in mind that, as the queen bee ages, its productive capacity is reduced. As usual practice in industrial beekeeping, queen bees are removed annually to increase the performance of laying. In order to identify the queen, it is marked with a color that indicates the year of the birth of that particular queen bee and thus know its birth age. In organic beekeeping, as usual practice the queen is usually kept at least 2 years and substitutions or swarms are used as alternatives.

The queen bee will be dedicated solely and exclusively to laying fertilized eggs throughout its existence, to transmit tranquility and to unite all the components that make up the hive as in a well-traveled family. That is, the queen bee will never go out to pecorear and will spend her whole life in the dark laying eggs (except at the beginning of her existence, where she will make the first reconnaissance flights, and the bridal flight that will culminate in the mating with several drones, which we will explain in detail later).

The queen bee, through pheromones, exerts an influence on all the members of the hive. There is a set of bees that accompany the queen bee that constantly caress her with her antennae and distribute the real pheromones throughout the hive, passing it from mouth to mouth or through contact between the bees. These pheromones prevent new realeras from being built; they attract drones on the bridal flight; they make known to all the bees that the queen is present and ensure the hive's union; and prevent the development of the ovaries of the workers.

Depending on the cases that can occur in beekeeping, we can find several types of queens:

Replacement queens: to replace older or defective queens. They are raised without direct control by the beekeeper and have a good constitution. They are highly appreciated by beekeepers because they do not tend to swarm (the queen does not tend to swarm and, as it is a hereditary characteristic, her offspring will not tend to swarm either).

Queens that come from swarming: several queens will be born and only a single queen will stay in the hive next to the bees that have not left. They also have a good constitution, but their offspring will also inherit their tendency to swarm.

Rescue queens: they occur when the previous queen has died in an unplanned manner. When the queen is missing, the bees transform some of the hexagonal cells (initially intended for the workers) into wide, bell-shaped royal cells. Nurse bees feed these cells (both the oldest and the new ones that are created) with royal jelly).

This queen is no longer as desirable as the queen who is born first has initially received a feed not intended for the queen (it is later, while the larva is being formed, which receives food destined for the queen like royal jelly to convert a larva normal larval worker destined for queen bee). This first queen that is born (that has not been fed from the beginning with food destined for the queens) will kill all the other larvae from which other queens would emerge that have been fed with food destined for the queens since the beginning. Therefore, the queen that emerges and kills all the other queens that have not yet left the larvae is a queen who has not received a diet not 100% destined for the queen (and will not have developed so completely and perfect as a queen who would have received a nourishment for the queen since the beginning of her larval state). The bees that are responsible for feeding the queen bee larvae are called nurse bees.

The queen bee will be the only mother of all the hive members. But who or who are the parents? The queen, in the first week of life and after having previously made several reconnaissance flights to find the best place to reproduce, starts what is known as the nuptial flight. During this bridal flight, the queen pairs with up to 12 or 14 drones on the same day. The sperm of the chosen males are stored in the spermatheca of the queen bee, which will serve to fertilize the queen's eggs throughout her life.

The advantage of having sperm from several males helps a better adaptation of the colony to changes in the environment and speed of reaction to these changes by a greater number of bees in the hive. This ability to react and speed in adapting to the changes and specific situations of the environment, generate an advantage to the hive in the form of a better use of the resources of the environment that results in greater food reserves or honey crops.

In future blog posts we will talk about the swarm, its possible causes, characteristics, and how we can take advantage of it.

Mundoabejas.com team