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5 The Honey Bee Queen
Randy Oliver*
ScientificBeekeeping.com
The Queen's Function in the Hive
The queen bee holds a special mystique to beekeepers. Although she is treated as royalty, she is not responsible for much decision making in the colony. From a biological standpoint there is actually nothing particularly exceptional about her – she's a relatively normal reproductive female insect.
Practical application: The exceptional individuals in eusocial insect colonies are not their queens, but rather the non‐reproductive female worker caste (and subcastes) – the queen being the sole member of the female reproductive caste. All the functionally‐sterile worker caste members devote their energy and resources to support that singular egg‐producing “queen,” who acts not only as the “ovary” of the honey bee superorganism, but also as the pheromonal “gravitational center” of the colony (Figure 5.1).
The queen is indeed the heart of the hive – not only due to her being the mother of all the other members of the colony, but also by secreting pheromones that induce colony cohesiveness, suppress ovary development in the rest of the females, and perhaps most importantly, to provide an “honest signal” as to her reproductive status (as opposed to merely suppressing competitive egg laying) (Niño et al. 2013). Queen pheromone (actually a variable mixture of several pheromones) appears to also suppress the feeding of most female larvae, thus epigenetically resulting in them becoming functionally‐sterile “workers” rather than reproductive queens.
A young, well‐mated, healthy queen will attract a strong “retinue” of nearby nurse bees that offer her jelly, groom her, and transfer her pheromones to the rest of the members of the colony (Figure 5.2). An experienced beekeeper can immediately recognize, by colony organization and temperament, whether it has a queen that is producing abundant queen pheromone.
Practical application: Despite her royal treatment and being the mother of all the workers in the hive, the queen enjoys no particular fealty from her functionally‐sterile daughters. She is entirely fungible, and the colony will replace her at the drop of a hat should it sense, via pheromonal or other cues, that either she or the colony is failing.
Queen Development and Performance
Queen Larval Development
A queen is reared in large, vertical cell as opposed to the smaller horizontal cell of a worker. All female larvae are fed essentially the same diet for the first 24
