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Bees are an organized species of creatures that live by their own set laws and rules. Over millions of years of evolution, the formation of a social type of behavior was carried out, the division of individuals according to functions. Each bee has a purpose and it does not matter at all whether it is a drone, a working individual or a queen bee, thanks to which the bee community achieves normal life. The queen bee is the queen of the hive, which not only unites the whole family, but also continues the family. The main task of the queen bee is to reproduce and keep the family intact.
What does a queen bee look like?
A distinctive feature of the queen bee is its size. As a rule, the queen bee is several times larger in length and weight. The body length is 2-2,5 cm, and the weight varies from 18 to 33 g.
The body of the queen is elongated, the abdomen has a torpedo shape, which protrudes rather strongly beyond the wings. Unlike other insects, the queen bee has much smaller eyes; there are no differences in the internal structure. The main difference between the queen bee is the developed ovaries.
The queen bee is slow, it is difficult for her to move, as a result of which she does not leave the hive without the need for mating or swarming. Worker bees are constantly around the queen, who care for and feed the hostess. If necessary, you can see what the queen bee looks like in the photo.
Fetal uterus
As a rule, a fetal queen is a bee that managed to mate with drones, after which she began to lay fertilized eggs in large numbers. From them, working individuals are subsequently derived.
The queen bee looks much larger compared to other insects. Thanks to her, the strength and power of the whole family is determined. As experienced beekeepers often notice, the peculiarity of the bee colony depends entirely on the queen bee, as a result of which they can be friendly or aggressive.
Infertile uterus
An infertile queen is an individual that has not yet gone through the process of mating with drones, as it is still young or it could not mate due to bad weather, as a result of which it remained infertile. In such cases, the queen bee lays exclusively infertile eggs, from which drones hatch.
After such an individual leaves the mother liquor, it is still weakened for some time, due to the crowded intestines, movement is slow. A few days later, the bee gains strength and after another 4 days goes for an approximate flight, after a week it flies out to mate.
How to distinguish a fetal uterus from an infertile uterus
It often happens that at the initial stages it is quite difficult to distinguish a fertile bee from an infertile one. After the individuals are born, they have the same size and body structure, and show the same activity. Only after 5 days, differences become visible, and the infertile uterus begins to noticeably lag behind in growth.
The fetal uterus is quite large, it moves slowly on the combs, without sudden movements. She has a thick belly, is constantly close to open brood – she is looking for free cells for laying eggs.
In turn, the infertile uterus is very fussy, constantly in motion. It is small in size, the abdomen is thin, it constantly appears in different parts of the nest. If necessary, you can see the size of the bee queens in the photo, which will allow you to understand the differences between the species.
How does the queen appear in bees?
The development of the main bee in the hive occurs in several stages:
- Day 1-2 – the egg is in the womb, after which it is laid in a specially prepared bowl;
- Day 3-7 – a larva hatches, which actively feeds on royal jelly;
- 8-12 days – the larva actively feeds and prepares to become a chrysalis;
- Day 13-16 – pupa period;
- Day 17 – the appearance of an infertile uterus.
After 5 days, the queen begins to fly around, which lasts for 7 days, after which the queen returns to the hive and begins to lay eggs.
Life cycle
If the bee family lives in natural conditions, then the queen bee lives like this for 8 years. The first few years of life, the queen bee is characterized by a high level of fertility – it can lay up to 2000 eggs per day, with time the reproductive ability decreases. The stock of semen obtained during fertilization dries up, and the queen bee lays unfertilized eggs. As soon as the bee colony begins to feel that their queen is becoming drone, she is replaced.
What are the functions of the queen bee
The duties of the queen bee include maintaining the number of insects in the hive, in addition, she unites the swarm. You can determine the quality of the queen by the number of eggs laid. If the queen bee is good, then within 24 hours she will lay about 2000 eggs. After the eggs are fertilized, workers and other queens are born, drones are born from unfertilized eggs.
As practice shows, the life expectancy of the queen of the hive is about 5 years, after a few years the reproductive ability declines, the queen bees lay fewer and fewer eggs, as a result of which the beekeepers replace the queen after 2 years. Bees are able to recognize the queen bee by the pheromones that she secretes (they also determine death and loss).
Types of queens
To date, there are 3 types of queens, if necessary, you can see what the queen bee looks like in the photo:
- fistulous – appears after the previous queen was lost or died;
- swarm – appears at the moment when the bee colony plans to leave the hive. Such individuals are considered the strongest and are able to give a healthy offspring;
- quiet shift – the process of appearance is natural, such an individual comes to replace the old queen.
It is important to control swarm queens, as sooner or later they will leave the hive with the whole family.
Fistulous
The fistulous queen is the queen bee that replaces the queen. If the queen bee died, then the swarm will know about her death in 30 minutes. In such situations, the bee colony begins to buzz quite loudly, work stops and the search for the queen begins. It is at this point that the bees are forced to breed a new queen if the old one has not been found.
The larvae begin to be actively fed with uterine milk (as a rule, in a normal situation, the larvae are given milk for several days, after which they are transferred to a mixture of honey and perga). After 20 days, about 20-25 new queens are born, which gradually begin to destroy each other. This is due to the fact that more than 1 queen cannot live in a hive.
Since such individuals develop in small cells, their quality is much lower. Some experienced beekeepers combine several cells together, giving the larva more room to develop, but since such work is laborious, this method is rarely used.
Swarm
In the process of life, the queen bee lays from 10 to 50 queen cells, as a rule, their number depends entirely on the strength of the family. The larvae that are born receive all the best – they are provided with the best food, carefully looked after, as a result, it turns out to produce high quality individuals. A distinctive feature of this species of queens is the tendency to swarm. If the necessary measures are not taken in a timely manner, the swarm leaves the apiary. That is why many beekeepers prefer to resort to queen isolation.
Quiet shift
The old queen of the hive lays an egg in a separate bowl, meanwhile the life of the family goes on as before. After 16 days, a new queen bee hatches from the egg, which kills the old queen.
The birth of a silent shift uterus is carried out in several cases:
- This situation was provoked personally by the beekeeper.
- The bee is too old.
- The queen bee is damaged, as a result of which she will die in the near future.
Queens obtained in this way are of the highest quality.
Conclusion of the queen bee
There are several ways to bring out the queen bee: natural, artificial. If the natural path is chosen, then the bees independently build a mother liquor, where they later lay their eggs. In order for the emerging queens to have a well-developed reproductive ability, they are intensively fed using royal jelly for this.
With an artificial method, you will need:
- Remove the queen bee and open brood from the hive, leaving only eggs and larvae.
- In order for new individuals to gain excellent reproductive abilities, the combs are cut from below.
- The mother liquor is cut out, placed in the hive, after which the queen is returned.
Flying around the queens
After the hive queen has reached puberty, she goes to perform the mating ritual. Often the queen bee does not leave the apiary during the flight. After 7 days, the uterus carries out a flight for mating. If, for some reason, mating does not occur within a week, then the queen remains infertile.
The mating involves the drone that managed to catch up with the queen, the whole process takes place in the air, in warm weather. If fertilization is successful, then the bee rips out the genitals from the drone and returns with them to the hive to prove that the mating was successful.
Conclusion
The queen bee is the queen of the bee family, whose duties include laying eggs and maintaining life in the hive. The whole hive takes care of the queen bee, she is taken care of, fed and protected. Only one queen can live in a bee family, if a second one appears, they will fight until only one is left alive.