The queen bee is the only female bee in the colony whose reproductive system is fully developed.

The queen bee is the female bee in a colony whose reproductive organs are fully developed, and she is raised from a female larva hatched from a fertilized egg that feeds on royal jelly throughout its development. A colony usually has only one queen bee, and she takes on the task of laying eggs to reproduce, making her the core of the entire colony.

In appearance, the queen bee is noticeably longer than worker bees, with a particularly slender abdomen and relatively short wings. The queen bee can secrete queen pheromone, which is used to maintain colony order and suppress the ovarian development of worker bees, while worker bees surround and feed her. During the peak breeding period, a good queen bee can lay over a thousand eggs in a day and night, and her lifespan generally reaches several years.

The quality of the queen bee directly affects the colony strength and production performance, so artificial queen rearing is an important part of beekeeping production. Beekeepers often choose bee breeds with stable traits, strong egg-laying ability and good disease resistance for breeding, and promptly introduce a new queen after a colony loses its queen, so as to avoid chaos such as worker bees laying eggs.

It should be noted that the queen bee and royal jelly are two different concepts. Royal jelly is a milky white paste secreted by worker bees, used specifically to feed the queen bee and young larvae. The price of queen bees on the market varies with breed, age in months and egg-laying performance, so when purchasing, it is advisable to combine local climate and breeding purposes and select healthy individuals with a full abdomen and steady movement.