Skip to main content

Queen

honey bee queen

Honey bee queen is a female able to mate with drones and lay fertilized eggs. In a colony there is usually one queen. It is not able to rear brood when not attended by workers. Development time of queen is about 16 days. It develops in queen cells. Early in life the queen mates during mating flights with multiple drones and stores the semen in spermatheca. After mating the main task of the queen is egg laying. During 24 hours the queen is able to lay more than 2000 eggs. At the time of egg laying the queens is attended by workers which feed and groom her.