Roles of Queen Bee Inside the Hive
The queen bee caste is present in social bees (and most social insects), like the honey bee Apis mellifera and the bumble bees (Bombus spp.). Her Majesty’s primary purpose is to lay eggs and maintain colony cohesion through pheromones. Genetically, the bee queen is no different from her sister worker bees. She appears different because of being fed a royal jelly diet during her larval stage.
This article explores the functions of a queen, the methods bees use to raise queens as well as the mating process of a newly-hatched virgin queen.
There are two shirts that go with this article, designed & printed by yours truly:
What is the Purpose of Queen Bees?
In short, the primary role of queens is egg laying, followed by colony cohesion via pheromones, followed by being a headache for beekeepers to spot on frames.
The Role of Queen Bee in Laying Eggs
It is the workers, not the queen, who command. The queen has a retinue, who cleans, feeds and guides her across the wax comb to lay eggs. Prior to each egg laying, the queen feels the cell walls with her forelegs to determine:
If it is for workers, meaning that the queen will lay fertilized eggs that develop into female bees, which makeup the majority of the hive population.
If the cells are slight larger, the queen will lay unfertilized eggs and produce the male bees, drones.
If it is placed in a large, protruding cell, she will also lay a fertilized egg that is becomes a new queen bee.
These queen cells are either located on the bottom on the frame (swarm cells) or within the normal brood comb (supersedure cells).
If they located on the frame and constructed poorly, then they are likely emergency queen cells.
For the more pedantic readers, the queen only determinises fertilisation (fertilised = female; unfertilised = male). Whether that fertilised egg becomes a queen or a worker isn’t up to Her, rather it is from the workers feeding her a continued diet of royal jelly inside queen cell cups.
Does the Queen Control the Honey Bee Colony?
The female workers are in command of the colony; the queen has no part in this. Her main function is to lay eggs and produce pheromones that influence worker behaviour. Workers perform all the colony’s tasks and decision-making, like when to swarm, attack, or replace Her Majesty after her poor performance. Pheromones are signalling chemicals released by an animal to control the behaviour of other animals in the vicinity – more on honey bee pheromones here.
Queen Mandibular Pheromone, QMP
QMP is used to maintain colony cohesion and inhibit the development of the worker bees’ ovaries, stopping them from laying eggs, and also signal colony conditions, with high levels indicating a strong queen presence and general good health. The presence of QMP signals the queen’s presence, and prevents the workers from producing queen cell cups. During mating flights, the new queen relies on QMP to signal her location to the drones, promoting successful couplings.
Depending on its size, a colony can become saturated with QMP from a few hours to a day. When a worker bearing QMP interacts with another worker (via feeding or grooming), they will pass the QMP to them, and that worker will go on to pass it to others until the entire hive is familiar with the scent.
Queen Retinue Pheromone, QRP
Like QMP, this pheromone is also secreted by the queen bee’s mandibular gland. It is primarily responsible for attracting and retaining the clusters of worker bees that follow and attend to the needs of the queen. It is from the decline in substance as the queen ages that triggers swarming behaviour in colonies (reviewed in Grozinger et al., 2015).
Discovery & Dispersal
Both pheromones were discovered by analysing the chemical components present in the queen’s mandibular glands. The enclosed hive space and volatile nature of these pheromones causes them to spread quickly, whether through air or by its traces on trodden comb. As mentioned previously mentioned, the workers in the queen’s retinue pass the scent to other bees as they interact with them.
Reasons for Queen Bee Failure
Queen bees fail for a variety of reasons, with the simplest being age. The old queen is not as vigorous or efficient as a young and recently-mated queen; her egg laying capabilities are reduced. Consider requeening this hive to bring the colony back up to speed.
A reason faced by many novice beekeepers is queen injury. These range from a minor physical wound sustained during hive inspections, to the crushing of a queen’s abdomen due to improper manual handling. Remember: hold Her Majesty’s by the thorax, not the abdomen!
An Example of a Queen Failure that Required Re-Queening
Accidents happen. In this case, a brood frame inspection gone wrong. Once upon a time, Yours Truly had finished an inspection and was heading out to lunch when he noticed this odd cluster below… A queenless hive also falls under queen failure, right? In the end, the queens were able to raise an emergency queen and resume normal activity. Imagine the suspense while I waited those long weeks for the new queen to commence laying eggs!
How do Honey Bees Naturally Raise Queen?
The two main methods of raising new queens are swarming and supersedure. The former is a natural means of colony reproduction, the latter is used when the hive detects a failing queen and prepares to replace her. Emergency queen cells are the third, rarer less frequent method. Queens are raised “naturally” when workers build special queen cells from very young larvae and feed them more royal jelly. Beekeepers can manipulate hive conditions (e.g. create queenless starter colonies, ensure plenty of nurse bees etc…) to induce queen production
Swarming as a Pheromone-Driven Process
For a superorganism like bees, reproduction is done through swarming. Under ideal conditions within the natural beehive, the European honey bee, A. mellifera, swarms once or twice per year, whilst other species, like the Asian honey bees Apis cerana, swarm up to six times per year. Further comparisons of the two species is available on the Scientific Name of Bees.
There has been a great deal of research into what triggers swarming, from the season (more likely in late spring & summer), to colony density. As colonies grow, the increased number of bees means that there is less room in the hive, and so worker bees prepare queen cups1 raising new queens. The characteristic presence of these queen cups is on the bottom of brood frames. Multiple cups are created since the hive raises more than one queen for swarming.
From the work of C. G. Butler, It is now known that swarming is triggered as a result of reductions in queen pheromones such as the Queen Retinue Pheromone. Each year, it decreases by half, and by the second year she is producing a quarter as much as pheromones as a newly-mated queen, hence considered to be the prime trigger for swarming.
The worker bees place the old queen on a weightloss regimen; reducing her feeding frequency and preparing her for flight. Once the new queen(s) emerge, the prime (or initial) swarm departs and the now-slim queen takes around half of the bees with her to a nearby location, at which point the worker bees begin scouting for a suitable new site. The outcome between bees in a hive box or bees in trees is determined by the beekeeper’s preparedness and the swarm’s decision making.
This behaviour is a good indicator of a strong hive, however it is also a strong headache for beekeepers in urban areas, as neighbours and passersby do not appreciate the sudden appearance of too many bees in their favourite tree or garden shed.
Out of the Royal Jelly and into the Royal Rumble
The virgin queen emerges from her cell after 15-16 days, having been fed a diet of royal jelly throughout her larval period (a regiment that continues for the rest of her life). The first hatching queen can kill the other queens who are still in their cells, and if successful, will gain control of the colony. The queen’s stinger is only used for regicidal occasions, and the emergent queen does this quite well to ensure that only a single queen takes over the colony.
Why Some Colonies Undergo Queen Bee Supersedure
The superseding method for replacing failing queens generally occurs due to an insufficient egg laying capacity resulting from age or injury. In supersedure, the queen cups are located throughout the comb rather than the bottom, and only a few queens are reared in comparison to swarming.
Creation of the “Emergency” Queen Cell
As the name suggests, the emergency cell is an unplanned queen-raising event, taking place if the queen was to suddenly die or disappear from the hive. The workers sense a reduction in her pheromones and commence rearing a new queen from the worker eggs. In many cases, this is due to mismanagement by the beekeeper during hive inspections, with other reasons including disease, predators, or natural causes.
Modern Queen Rearing Methods: Grafting
Beekeepers raising queens commercially or for their own apiaries use established techniques to control genetics and queen physical characteristics (weight, length, etc…). There are several methods which I will mention here:
- Grafting larvae (<24 h old) into queen cups and raising them in a cell-building colony.
- A labour-intensive & old-school method – the Jenter board is a rival method that attempts to simplify things
- Cloake board systems to create queenless conditions and increased acceptance.
- Consists of a queen excluder mounted to a wooden frame. The wooden frame contains a slot which allows a “temporary” floor (solid divider) to be inserted – see Wikipedia for more
- Jenter kits to guide egg laying directly into removable cups.
- “The Jenter kit uses a system of plastic cups or ‘cells’ in which a queen bee can lay her eggs. The cells containing the eggs can then be removed from the laying box and placed into an isolated box for larval development – with no direct handling of the larvae.” – Wikipedia
- Transferring capped queen cells from a frame into nucs for emergence and mating.
- A good approach – been there, done that.
How do Virgin Queens Mate?
The last standing virgin queen has now declared herself inside the hive and prepares for her rule. She will does not commence the mating flight right away; the newly hatched queen will spend anywhere between 5-10 days in the hive until she is sexually mature. (Tarpy et al., 2004) In this period, the organ that stores sperm (spermatheca) develops, and her Queen Mandibular Pheromone production increases in preparation for attracting drones.
Once the ideal weather conditions are present, the queen takes flight to drone congregation areas. As the name suggest, they are locations containing a large number of drones waiting for a mate. During this period, the drones will chase the queen in attempts to commence copulation. Queens can mate with up to 20 drones, and the successful male is rewarded with a contribution to genetic diversity, along with an abrupt end to his life2.
Once the queen has sufficiently mated and filled her spermatheca, she returns to her hive as the only mated female, capable of laying fertilized eggs that will develop into worker or queen bees, depending on the hive’s requirements. Beekeepers can confirm successful mating by observing the “mating sign” – remnants of the drone endophallus at tip of her abdomen (Woyke 2010)
Normal queens can remain viable for as long as 5 years, but beekeepers are advised to requeen a hive every 1 or 2 years to maintain optimal colony health.
Why do Honey Bees Replace Queens?
This article covered the natural, bee-mediated methods of queen rearing, describing:
The queen’s roles inside the hive, and how her lifecycle differs from a worker bee.
The reasons for failing in her functions, and the ways she is replaced, whether for reproductive purposes or outright removal.
The activities that take place during the mating flight, and the fate of drones after their time in the spotlight.
On a commercial level, queen rearing is scaled by enterprising beekeepers who generate an income by selling queens to those other beekeepers with 1, 100 or 100,000 hives.
##I’ve had this article up for >2 years and only now I found a typo in the title of “Rasing Queens Bee”… very clever of me – 15Aug2025.
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Footnotes
- “Queen cup” refers to the fully-formed, empty egg cell, whereas “queen cells” refers to the cups that contain queen larvae. ↩︎
- †Drones die shortly after ejaculation as their reproductive organ, the endophallus, remains inside the queen due to the high internal pressure developed during intercourse. During ejaculation, the endophallus is forcefully ejected, rupturing his abdomen leading to death. This is not so grim, as the drone’s sole function is to provide a colony with a mated queen. Once that objective is fulfilled, their survival is no longer essential to the hive’s success. A happy ending, indeed. ↩︎