Unknown Facts About Queen Bees

Like every group needs and has a leader to thrive in nature, the same is with bees. The leader of the bees is their queen bee. It is different in shape and size from the brooders or worker bees. Bees are very famous for producing honey, but if their queen bee dies, the group needs to find a new queen bee for themselves or else they will die.

Here are some of the interesting facts that you might not know about queen bee:

·        Queen bee is crowned not born - Don’t get lost around the fact that queen bees are crowned like real people. No, they are simply appointed and respected as the leaders of the group without any fancy ceremony. Queen bees are not born, they are appointed. Worker bees must determine which bee larvae will have the new queen. After deciding that, the queen larvae are provided with a special diet.

·        Queen bees need to eliminate other potential queens - The queen bee will emerge from one of the queen cups. But the interesting part is, there are more than one queen cups. So whenever a queen comes out of one of the cups, she uses her sting to kill the other bees in the cups. In case if another queen hatches out of the cups before the first queen kills all the cups, a fight to death takes place. The bee which wins is made the new queen of the hive.

·        A special diet for queen bee - The queen bee is fed the most special diet. A special jelly is used to feed queen bees. The interesting part about this is the fact that the queen bees are fed nothing but special jelly. They are not fed pollen and honey. This is what separated the queen bee from the other bees.

·        She can lay a lot of eggs - Queen bees can usually lay around 1,500 to 2,000 eggs in a day. Not only that, but she also can choose the gender of her offspring by either fertilizing or not fertilizing the eggs. Fertilized eggs result in the birth of female bees, which are workers or one of the future queen’s and unfertilized eggs are male bees, which become the drones of the hive.

·        Queen bees can sting again and again - Most of the bees lose their stingers when they sting someone. But it is not the same as the queen bee. When a queen bee stings, her stinger is not lost. She can sting a great number of times in her lifetime. It is usually because her stinger doesn’t have barbs like normal bees stinger’s have, which get stuck.

·        The lifespan - The lifespan of a queen bee is usually of around 1 year. But it also depends on the species of the queen bee.  Some reports support the claim that queen bees of few species have lived over 7 years. A queen bee is also the largest bee in the hive.

Queen bee is the most important part of a beehive, so beekeepers need to know these facts about them.