BEEKEEPING
Queenspotting
The queen bee is an incredible, elusive insect, the most important bee
in the hive, explains Kelly Lees.T
he queen bee is the mother to almost all the bees
in her hive, (there is the occasional bee from
elsewhere). A queen bee has complex reproductive
anatomy holding both eggs and sperm inside her body,
enabling her to create large productive bee colonies.
A queen bee can lay 1500-2000 eggs per day (more
than her own body weight) and hundreds of thousands
of eggs in her lifetime. Queens can lay two types of eggs,
fertilised and unfertilised, and the type of egg she lays
will depend on the size of the wax cell her daughters
have built for her to lay in.
Queens walk about the brood nest area of the hive
seekingemptycells.Whenshefindsone,sheputsher
headinsidethecellinspectingit,andpushingherfront
legstothecelledgestomeasureit.If thecellis smallthe
queenwillturnaroundinsertherlongabdomenand
laya fertilisedegg,if thecellis large,shewilllayan
unfertilisedegg.Thefertilisedeggswillbecomefemaleworker bees and the unfertilised eggs will become male
drone bees. Her eggs are always laid in the centre of the
cell bottom standing upright.How are queens made?
Any fertilised egg can also become a queen. By heavily
feeding this larva a diet of royal jelly, the developing
young female bee becomes a virgin queen, and the
workers will enlarge the cell to accommodate the
bigger queen bee. This is how the worker bees make
a new queen when they want to swarm or replace
an old queen bee (known as supersedure).
Whena virginqueenhatches,shewillgoouton
oneorseveralmatingflightsintheweekfollowingher
birth.Shewillflytoa locationknownasthedroneAbove:Queenbeeshaveparticularcharacteristicsthat
makethemeasiertofindinamongsttheworkers.organicgardener.com.au^85
PHOTO: KELLY LEES