The Bee Queen Biology

At the center of every swarm is the queen bee. She is the only fertile female in the bee society. Her body, specifically the mandibular glands, produces the so-called queen substance, which unites the members of the bee family and allows worker bees to assess the queen’s health. The worker bees, constantly in the queen’s entourage, lick her and distribute her pheromones throughout the swarm. This allows the signal about the queen’s condition to reach every worker bee in the swarm, which sometimes numbers up to 100,000 workers, within a few hours. This, in turn, determines the bees’ behavior, work, and secretion of other pheromones, which act as colony-specific hormones.

The queen bee is usually surrounded by a retinue of young worker bees producing royal jelly. They feed the queen a high-protein diet, enabling some lines of bees to produce up to 4,000 eggs per day. This amount is twice the queen’s own body mass! Only in winter is the queen fed honey, causing her to stop egg production during this unfavorable period.

Bee queen selection in bee colony…

A frequently asked question is how bees select a queen. The answer is quite complex and paradoxical. Every worker and queen bee begins life as a larva from the same fertilized egg, hatching precisely 3 days after being laid in a cell. For the first 3 days of life, all larvae receive royal jelly as food. However, larvae destined to become workers receive less royal jelly each day, and by the 4th day, they are fed only a mixture of pollen and honey. This nutritious food, however, is of much lower quality and digestibility than royal jelly. Therefore, larvae fed with honey and pollen from the 3rd day of life develop into worker bees. Queen bees, on the other hand, are fed royal jelly throughout their larval stage, which is not only the best source of nutrition but also has hormonal functions. Consequently, larvae fed this way transform into fully developed females – future queens.

Bees raise new queens in three situations:
a) The most obvious is the desire to reproduce the colony. Bees cannot divide the swarm into two parts without dividing the queen. While physically dividing her is not possible, raising a new queen from the numerous eggs laid is relatively simple. When the hive is crowded, with high CO2 levels, unemployment, and plenty of food, workers feed themselves heavily on royal jelly, feeding each other and consuming honey and pollen. Soon, a hormonal decision is made to start so-called queen cups – special cells oriented vertically downward at the edge of the combs. If unemployment persists, the queen is forced to lay eggs in these cells, initiating the swarming process. The eggs are lavishly covered with royal jelly, and the larvae are well-fed from the start. The cells are then extended downward, and the growing larvae soon transform into new queens. Before this happens, the old queen, along with half of the workers, leaves the hive, making room for the young queen. Queens raised this way are usually large and robust and cannot pass through the queen excluder (a grid that separates the honey area from the egg-laying area).

Typically, bees establish several such cells and tend to multiple queens. However, the first one to hatch usually kills the others still in the pupal stage. If the old queen is still in the hive, a battle ensues, with the young queen always winning by dethroning and killing the old queen.
b) As the queen bee ages, she becomes more susceptible to diseases and lays fewer eggs. Worker bees detect changes in the composition of the queen substance she secretes, which signals her health status. If they detect that the queen is sick, they establish so-called emergency queen cells and raise a new queen similarly to the swarming method. However, the new queen does not fight the old, sick queen. Both queens coexist in the hive until the old or sick queen dies naturally. This method is known as a quiet queen replacement because the bees do not exhibit any unusual behavior, making it easy for beekeepers to miss. Sometimes bees replace the queen not because she is sick, but because her pheromones do not match their expectations, especially if she is from a different breed. They may persistently attempt a quiet replacement, often using her own eggs.
c) Occasionally, the queen dies suddenly. In such cases, bees quickly convert ordinary comb cells with 3-day-old larvae into queen cells. These larvae are poorly fed but still capable of becoming queens. They choose relatively older larvae to save time. They raise several emergency queens, with the strongest one winning after a fight and replacing the deceased queen. Due to the haste and poor nutrition, these queens are often small and can easily pass through the queen excluder. Although smaller queens can still perform well, beekeepers use them only as a last resort due to their lower fertility and difficulty in control – small queens can lay eggs in the honey area, making honey extraction impossible until all bees develop from such eggs.

Queen bees can live up to 6 years. Between the 4th and 18th day after transforming into an adult bee, they undertake a mating flight, during which they mate with 10-13 unrelated drones. They store the sperm for their entire life, leaving the hive only with a swarm and never displaying sexual instincts again. If a young queen does not mate by around the 20th day of her life, she starts laying unfertilized eggs, dooming her colony. Unfertilized eggs develop into male drones.

Balling Queen Bees

Essentially, the process of balling a queen bee is related to the unfavorable reaction of bees to the introduction of a foreign queen or the presence of two queens in one hive.

This process involves the close pressing of worker bees’ bodies against the queen, the honeycomb, or the hive wall in such a way that the stinging bees cannot reach her. By separating the queen from aggressive workers or another queen, the colony gains time to exchange hormonal information and make the appropriate decision on whether and which queen to remove.

Although balling protects the queen and occurs immediately when the workers detect that another worker wants to sting the queen, it is not a 100% effective method of safeguarding her. Sometimes, despite the balling, the aggressive worker bees manage to slip through the sides, exposing the queen to attack.

Certainly, balling is an indication of the queen’s threat, yet it is an inherently protective phenomenon towards her, albeit not always effective.

A swarm of bees being settled in a mini-nucleus hive. From 1:30 in the video, you can hear the sound of the calling queen after being settled, which is very loud. Following this, the process of balling a young queen bee, released too early from the cage after replacing the old queen, is shown.