Motherhood, By The Thousands

Ah, to be a queen bee. Bullying the minions, parading around in elegant finery, shouting, “Off with her head!” whenever someone displeases you … Oh wait, that’s not a queen bee, that’s the Queen of Hearts from “Alice in Wonderland.” Being a queen bee is, sadly, not nearly as much fun.Unlike the tens of thousands of worker bees that make up nearly all the hive’s population, the queen has one single job—to lay eggs. Lots and lots of eggs. Two thousand a day from about mid-March to mid-October in our region, or one egg approximately every 42 seconds. This is hardly a life of leisure.

But a queen bee does get special treatment from the get-go, at least. Attendants feed queen bee larvae a substance called royal jelly, secreted from glands in their heads. All honeybee larvae get royal jelly for the first three days of their lives, but queen larvae enjoy the top-shelf goods throughout their larvae-hood. Everyone else switches to a diet of honey and pollen after day three. That dietary difference serves to keep worker bee ovaries from developing, keeping them sexually immature.

Queen bees come about in three ways:

• When a queen is sick or failing due to injury or old age, the hive will prepare for her replacement by building queen cells and raising new queen bees. These supersedure queen cells hang vertically off the side of the frames. Much larger than drone cells, they look like peanut shells, with a rough texture and elongated shape to accommodate the queen bee’s large size. They are about an inch long.

• A healthy hive will often have the beginnings of a few queen cups, which are the foundation of queen cells, on hand at all times. The workers build these emergency supersedure cups as an insurance policy against the queen’s unexpected demise. Since some experts say you can figure on accidentally killing your queen one out of every 10 times you open up your hive, it’s probably good that the bees aren’t taking any chances. Should the queen die suddenly, the workers will move a few young larvae into the queen cells, load them up with royal jelly, and raise them as queens.

• When the living is easy, workers will also build swarm cells, which are queen cups that hang off the bottom of the frames. A hive will tend to swarm in the late spring when things are going great and the hive is strong enough to split into two healthy colonies. Before half the hive takes the queen and leaves, swarm cells are built so the original colony isn’t left queenless.

As soon as she hatches from her cell, a virgin queen’s first task is to dispose of the competition. She looks for other queen cells and assassinates the developing queens within. Queen bee is a solo gig; although two-queen hives occur occasionally, they are rare.

Rivals dispatched, she takes what will likely be the only flight of her entire life. She heads out to a drone congregation area 2 to 5 miles from the hive, all aflutter with pheromones and freedom. By going so far from home, she doesn’t run the risk of mating with drones from her own hive, a bad idea from a genetic standpoint. Sort of like marrying your first cousin. The drones, which are less ambitious than the queen, stay within 2 miles of their hive.

The drone congregation area is like a singles bar where all the singles—as many as several thousand—are lonely guys. Hovering as high as 100 feet in the air, they are, we may assume, very happy to see her. The queen will mate in mid-air with several drones. Those that get lucky won’t live to tell their friends about it, as honeybee sex is fatal for the drones.

Loaded up with sperm from enough drones to ensure a healthy level of genetic diversity in her offspring, the queen heads back to the hive, where she’ll spend the rest of her life, as long as five years, laying eggs in the dark.

Surrounded by a coterie of attendants that feed, clean and protect her, the queen moves through the hive, laying eggs in cells that have been scrubbed and prepared by the workers. A good queen will generally lay her eggs in an oval pattern in the middle of the frame, surrounded by cells loaded up with honey and pollen. Once she lays an egg, she doesn’t fuss over it, coming up with larva names or wondering whose eyes it will have; she moves on to the next prepared cell. Forty-two seconds between offspring does not give one much time to ponder the big questions.

Most of the eggs she lays will grow into worker bees. In early spring, when drones are needed, workers will build drone cells, larger than worker cells, and direct the queen to lay drone eggs in those. Through some instinct or chemical signal, she knows to lay unfertilized eggs. Unlike workers and queens, drones have only one parent—the queen bee.

Although a queen bee’s natural life span can be as long as five years, commercial beekeepers frequently replace the queen annually to ensure a young, energetic egg-layer. I’m a bit too softhearted to crush my queen every year (the usual method) and prefer to trust the bees to know when she needs to go.

The bees, however, don’t get nearly as sentimental about it as I do. Being queenless is a worst-case scenario for a hive. No queen means no new bees, and with some 2,000 worker bees dying every day, the population can plummet fast if those workers aren’t being replaced. But that’s not the only reason for alarm.

Besides laying eggs, the queen also exudes pheromones that keep the hive running smoothly. The bees that care for her get bathed in those pheromones and spread them to other bees, eventually spreading the good vibes throughout the hive. When Mama’s happy, everybody’s happy. Without those pheromones, a hive gets cranky fast, and even the gentlest bees may become easily provoked.

Worker bees are all female, but the queen’s pheromones prevent the workers’ ovaries from developing. After several weeks without a queen in the hive, some workers may begin laying eggs. A hive with a laying worker is in deep trouble. The eggs are not fertilized, so will either hatch into drones or not hatch at all. You can see why the bees take every precaution to ensure the presence of a queen.

As you may know from studying the British monarchy, transitioning to a new queen is tricky business. Workers prefer to keep the old queen around until the new one is hatched and mated, to keep egg production moving along. But sometimes the reigning queen doesn’t take well to the idea of a young upstart and attempts to murder the larval queens before they hatch, forcing the workers to deal with her sooner rather than later. Either way, deal with her they must. Her loyal minions will turn on her and essentially cuddle her to death—crowding around her until she overheats and dies. Not a glamorous end, but as it turns out, there’s really nothing glamorous about being a queen bee at all, is there?