How are queen bees selected?

A bee becomes a queen bee thanks to the efforts of the existing worker bees in the hive. A young larva (newly hatched baby insect) is fed special food called “royal jelly” by the worker bees. Royal jelly is richer than the food given to worker larvae, and is necessary for the larva to develop into a fertile queen bee.

Do bees eat their honey?

The worker castes of most true honeybees eat honey. This hardworking caste eats honey to refuel after expeditions out of the hive. Honeybee workers spend a significant portion of their lives foraging. Workers gather nectar and pollen and return it to the beehive.

What does royal jelly look like?

Royal jelly, which also is called “bee milk,” looks like white snot. More than half of it is water, the rest is a combination of proteins and sugars. Special glands in the heads of worker bees secrete the stuff, which gets fed to babies.

What happens if you kill a queen bee?

If you kill the queen in this time, bees may make a new one, but the success of mating and breeding is limited by availability of the drones. So there is a good chance, that new queen will left unfertilized and that will very likely lead to the end of the collony in the next spring or probably earlier.

How do bees decide on a queen?

When worker bees decide to make a new queen, usually because the old one is either weakening or dead, they choose several small larvae and feed them with copious amounts of royal jelly in specially constructed queen cells. This type of feeding triggers the development of queen morphology, including the fully developed ovaries needed to lay eggs.

How do you identify a queen bee?

Steps Look for a bee larger than the others in the hive. The easiest way to tell the queen bee apart from other bees is by her size. Look for a bee with a pointed abdomen. A queen bee’s larger abdomen is noticeably more pointed than the abdomens of either worker or drone bees. Using a magnifying glass, look for a bee without a barb on its stinger.

How do bees make a queen?

In the spring, large colonies divide in two as a means of propagating the species. This process is called swarming. Roughly half the colony, as well as the queen, leaves the hive and sets out to start a new colony. The remaining bees make a new queen and continue on.