Queen bee

The queen bee is the only fertile female of a honey bee colony, and the one that lays eggs. At the height of the season a quality queen lays over 2,000 eggs a day. From egg to adult queen takes about 16 days.

The larvae raised as queens are fed royal jelly, secreted by the glands of young worker nurse bees aged 6–12 days. The queen cell is capped about 9 days after the egg is laid. When several queen cells are provisioned, the first queen to emerge kills her sisters.

A young queen stays in the hive for 5–8 days before her mating flights. According to Metz and Tarpy (Insects, 2019), she mates with about 12–20 drones and stores the sperm in her spermatheca. A queen can live 7 years or more, but productivity usually declines after 1–2 years; commercial beekeepers replace queens up to twice a year. According to MSU, queens older than 2 years should be replaced.

Why this matters to you. The queen determines colony strength and the urge to swarm: colonies with queens more than a year old are more likely to swarm, because older queens produce less queen substance (MSU). That is why beekeepers replace queens regularly.