At the center of every thriving honey bee colony is a single matriarch: the queen bee. She is the mother of the hive and the only bee capable of laying fertilized eggs, making her vital to the colony's survival.
While we often talk about "the" queen as a single entity, her life actually follows several distinct stages, each with a specific name and purpose. For any beekeeper, understanding these phases is crucial to maintaining a healthy, productive apiary.
This is a guide to the different types of queen bees, created to walk you through the incredible life of a hive's monarch, from her royal creation to her reign over thousands.
How a Queen Is Made
A queen bee is not simply born; she is chosen and crafted by the colony. She begins her journey as a standard female larva, genetically no different from the thousands of future worker bees around her.
The hive makes a conscious choice to create a new queen for several specific reasons. The current queen may be aging and less productive, the colony may be preparing to swarm and divide, or an emergency may have occurred in which the queen was unexpectedly lost.
The Royal Treatment
To create their new sovereign, worker bees select a few female larvae that are less than three days old. They move these chosen few into specially built "queen cells." These cells are much larger than those used for worker bees and hang vertically from the comb, resembling a peanut shell in both shape and size.
From that moment on, these larvae are fed an exclusive diet of royal jelly. This powerful, protein-rich substance is what triggers the larva's development into a fertile queen, allowing her ovaries to fully mature. The entire process, from egg to a fully formed adult queen, takes about 16 days.
The First Stage of Royalty: The Virgin Queen
Once she emerges from her cell, the newly hatched queen is known as a virgin queen. Her first instinct is to secure her position by eliminating all rivals. With her smooth, barbless stinger, she will systematically find any other queen cells in the hive and destroy the developing queens inside.
If another virgin queen has already emerged at the same time, they will fight until only one remains. A colony can only have one ruling queen, and this process ensures a clear and undisputed line of succession.
Preparing for Her Legacy
A virgin queen cannot yet lay fertilized eggs, which are necessary to produce the female worker bees that make up the hive's labor force. Her main focus during this time is to prepare for her crucial mating flight. She takes short orientation flights to learn the hive's location and builds up her strength for the important journey ahead.
The colony is in a state of suspended animation, with growth on hold until the new monarch successfully mates and begins laying. This is a vulnerable period for the hive.
The Critical Journey: The Mated Queen
About a week after emerging, the virgin queen will leave the hive on her one and only nuptial flight. She flies to a drone congregation area, a specific location where thousands of male bees, or drones, from various colonies gather.
She will mate with 10 to 20 different drones in mid-air. This single journey is the only time she will ever mate. During this flight, she collects and stores enough sperm to last her entire lifespan, which can be up to five years.
The Heartbeat of the Hive
After returning to the hive, she is officially a mated queen. Within a few days, she will begin her primary and most vital role: laying eggs. A healthy, well-mated queen is an egg-laying machine. At her peak, she can lay over 2,000 eggs in a single day, a total weight that exceeds her own body mass.
These eggs are the foundation of the colony's workforce. The success of her mating flight directly affects the genetic diversity and health of the entire hive.
A Peaceful Transfer of Power: The Supersedure Queen
Honey bees are incredibly perceptive. They can sense when their queen is beginning to fail, whether due to old age, an injury, or a decline in her egg-laying performance. When the workers detect this, they initiate a process called supersedure. This is the colony’s natural and peaceful method of replacing an old or failing queen.
Unlike an emergency situation, supersedure is a planned and orderly transition. The worker bees create one or more new queen cells while the old queen is still present and laying. The new queen raised through this process is known as a supersedure queen. Once she emerges and successfully mates, she takes over as the primary egg-layer.
In many cases, the old queen and the new queen can coexist for a short time before the old queen naturally fades away. This process ensures a seamless transfer of power without interrupting the colony's growth.
Responding to a Crisis: The Emergency Queen
Sometimes, a queen is lost suddenly. She might be accidentally killed during a beekeeper's inspection or fail to return from her mating flight. In these dire situations, the colony must raise an emergency queen to have any chance of survival. The worker bees will quickly select several existing female larvae, as long as they are young enough, and immediately begin feeding them royal jelly.
They modify the existing worker cells, building them out into queen cells to accommodate the growing larvae. While this action can save a colony from collapse, emergency queens are sometimes considered less than ideal. Because the larva was not fed royal jelly from its very first day of life, it may not develop as robustly as a queen raised in a planned queen cell. Still, this remarkable ability demonstrates the honeybee’s incredible survival instincts.
Your Partner in Beekeeping Success
Understanding this guide to the different types of queen bees is a fundamental part of successful beekeeping. After all, every stage of a queen's life marks a critical point in the colony's annual cycle, from the fierce virgin queen to the prolific mated queen. Her journey is a true marvel of the natural world.
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