The queen

Hatching from a fertilized egg, she is reared in a vertical, queen cell that is much larger than the worker bee cell.

The young queen larva is fed exclusively with copious amounts of royal jelly. The queen cell is then closed with a wax cap on day 9. The adult queen will emerge from her cell after the imaginal moult, 16 days after egg-laying.

Just born, the first queen to emerge must destroy all the larvae in the other queen cells, as there is only room for one queen in each colony.

If others are born at the same time, they fight mercilessly using their stinger. Designed to sting several times, the queen’s stinger is used solely to fight other queens.

The victorious queen sets off several days after her birth on her first and only mating flight (climatic conditions permitting: calm weather and temperature above 20°C). For fertilization to occur correctly, the queen must mate with a dozen drones until her spermatheca (sperm sac) is full. Once fertilised, she returns to the hive, where she will remain for the remaining four or five years of her life, unless there is a swarming.

She now begins her life as a Mated Queen. The queen lays as many male or female eggs (depending on their fertilization) as she likes. Fertilised eggs produce workers and unfertilised eggs produce drones. In spring, she can lay more than once her own weight each day, i.e. up to 2000 eggs per day (approximately 1 egg per minute)!

In addition, she emits a certain number of chemical substances called pheromones, which control behaviour within the colony (cohesion of the cluster, behaviour of the court) and modify the physiology of the field bees (inhibition of ovary development).

Continually surrounded, protected, nourished by her workers, the queen is the focus of all their attentions.