What role does the queen bee play in a bee colony, and what happens after she dies?

The queen bee, also called the mother bee, is a female bee with fully developed reproductive organs, developed from a fertilized egg. Usually each colony has only 1 queen, and the price varies with the quality of the queen, generally ranging from 100 yuan to several hundred yuan. So what role does the queen bee play in the colony? And what should be done if she dies?

1. What role does the queen bee play in the colony?

First of all, the queen bee is the highest manager and the most revered member of the colony, enjoying a very high status and treatment within the colony. Her food for life is the high-amino-acid, highly nutritious royal jelly secreted by the worker bees. The queen bee's greatest role in the colony is laying eggs; under normal conditions she can lay about 2000 eggs a day. It is worth noting that although the queen bee is called a queen, she does not actually play a leadership role in the colony. The real leaders in the colony are the worker bees, and the queen bee's role in the colony is simply to reproduce offspring.

2. What should be done if the queen bee dies in the colony?

For beekeepers, the queen bee is what they care about most in a colony. The quality of the queen directly determines the productivity of the entire colony; her quality determines the strength of the colony, and a high-quality queen is a necessary condition for ensuring high yields. In addition, the bees at the entrance of a colony with a queen will not be chaotic, while a colony without a queen will be chaotic and agitated. Therefore, when the queen bee dies unexpectedly or dies naturally, beekeepers need to understand the situation and remedy it in time. First of all, there is no need to worry excessively after the queen dies. Right after the queen's death, the colony will have a period of chaos. Generally after about a day, the worker bees will feed royal jelly to the bee pupae in the comb. After these royal-jelly-fed pupae emerge, they will form new queens. If multiple queens emerge at the same time, they will fight each other, and the one that survives to the end will become the new queen. This can be seen as a kind of explanation of natural selection.

Secondly, the most direct method after the queen dies is to introduce a new queen from another colony. If the colony can accept this new queen, then the colony will return to a normal state. According to investigations, the queen bee mainly guides the bees by scent. When introducing a new queen, first soak the queen in honey water; after the new queen is introduced, the bees will suck the honey water on her body, and gradually the queen's scent will be accepted by the colony.

Finally, the death of the queen represents that this colony is heading toward decline. At this time, the colony can be merged into other queen-right colonies to form a strong colony. When merging colonies, a divider can be inserted into the hive, using the divider to separate the queenless colony from the queen-right colony so that the queenless colony slowly adapts to the new queen's scent. Once the two sides no longer reject each other, the divider can be removed and they can be kept directly as one colony.

Summary: The above is a related introduction to what roles the queen bee plays in the colony and what to do if the queen bee dies. I hope it is helpful to friends who need it!