Queen Development and Mating Behavior#
1 . What is the honey bee queen’s primary responsibility?
To lay eggs. Queens, workers, and drones all come from the eggs laid by the queen. A mated queen fertilizes eggs which produce worker bees or other queens. Unfertilized eggs produce drones.
2 . A queen or worker bee’s development depends upon what kind of food fed to the larvae by the worker nurse bees?
This food is called royal jelly which is secreted by the glands in the head of the worker bees. Royal jelly is fed for the first three days to all members of the colony but then continuously fed after that to larvae destined to be queens.
3 . Queens are raised by bees under one of the following conditions:
Swarming impulse (crowded conditions)
Emergency replacement of the queen
Supersedure replacement of a failing queen
4 . When is a virgin queen ready to mate?
After she eliminates all other rival virgin queens and queen cells in the hive and is age appropriate. Orientation flights occur 2-3 days after emergence. Queens are usually ready to mate 1 week after emergence. Mating flights may last several days. She begins to lay eggs 2-3 days after mating and lays 1,500 to 2,000 eggs per day. Mated queen’s abdomen becomes visually much larger than that of a virgin queen.
5 . Explain the mating process of the queen bee.
Virgin queens will mate with up to 24 drones, but on average usually 12 to 18. She mates with drones while flying in the open and never in the hive. She retains their sperm in her spermatheca. Roughly 4-7 million sperm migrate to the oviduct in a period of about 2 days. They remain viable for her entire life. The sperm from all the drones is well mixed in the oviducts which means that she will express the genetics of all the drones throughout her life. As the number of drones that mate with the queen increases, so does the genetic variability of the colony. The bees have the same mother but some share different fathers. Genetic variability is good for the colony in order to deal with disease, parasites or some other environmental hiccup. Artificial insemination (AI) makes it possible to select a queen for a specific trait that the beekeeper deems desirable. AI is a highly trained skill and queens are more expensive that naturally mated one. All young virgin queens must leave the hive to mate. If the queen does not mate, she will end up being a drone laying queen.
6 . Do queens have muscular control over the releasing of sperm?
Yes, the queen can decide whether to release sperm and lay a fertilized egg that will result in a female worker or hold sperm and lay an unfertilized egg that results in a male drone.
7 . How soon after mating do queens begin to lay eggs?
Mated queens begin egg laying two or three days after the last mating flight.