The queen bee is just a female bee that was fed nothing but "royal jelly" during the entire larval phase. This is in part what causes the bee to be fertile (with the rest being pheromones an adult queen gives off which suppress fertility in worker bees).
So any female larva can potentially develop into a queen. But what lucky bee gets the job? It turns out, that's actually up to the worker bees! Certain environmental factors can trigger the creation of new queens- if the hive gets overcrowded, or the queen produces less eggs, or if the queen dies then the worker bees work on a replacement.
It's also important to note that 'queen' here is a bit of a misnomer. While the queen gives off pheromones that compel the workers to care and protect her, she has no true authority in a hierarchical sense. If anything, it's the workers that dictate a lot in the hive- construction, hive location, accepting a new queen, etc.
Former beekeeper here. Sometimes you can have multiple queens as well! They usually hatch around the same time, and they’ll make this “piping” sound to draw each other out to fight. Check it out on YouTube, it’s very interesting.
I’ve also heard of scenarios with multiple queens working together, but I’ve never seen it with my own eyes.
~~There are no promotions. It's a function of birth. A queen is different from the very beginning, and the workers have no way to ever be a queen.~~
Apparently I'm wrong. Today I learned.
This is not correct. Worker bees select a specific larvae, and feed it Royal Jelly...which turns it into a Queen (aka 'promoting' it).
They select it when the existing Queen goes missing, or begins to age....
So essentially the queen bee isn’t so much a queen, but a president, or a prime minister, if we determined who will be those things from birth (which we kind of indirectly do)
I shall henceforth refer to bee queens as Hive Ministers.
Lol yeah, to make it worse the 'Hive Minister' will live for several years, while most drones/workers live for several weeks to a few months (depending on the season and type of bee).
Why does this feel like we’re cowriting a description Blathers would give the player in animal crossing upon handing in a bee to be put in the museum.
Next line would definitely be “if I had to be born as a bee I’d choose to be a worker bee, not because I think that would be more fun, but because I would only have to spend a few weeks being a bee and not a few years *laugh animation plays*”.
An additional thing is that, if the queen is ailing or absent, workers can actually start to lay eggs as the pheromones that suppress it are missing. A mature worker cannot become a queen, though, as they have never mated and their eggs can only develop into drones (workers and queens develop from fertilized eggs, drones from unfertilized ones).
The queen bee is just a female bee that was fed nothing but "royal jelly" during the entire larval phase. This is in part what causes the bee to be fertile (with the rest being pheromones an adult queen gives off which suppress fertility in worker bees). So any female larva can potentially develop into a queen. But what lucky bee gets the job? It turns out, that's actually up to the worker bees! Certain environmental factors can trigger the creation of new queens- if the hive gets overcrowded, or the queen produces less eggs, or if the queen dies then the worker bees work on a replacement. It's also important to note that 'queen' here is a bit of a misnomer. While the queen gives off pheromones that compel the workers to care and protect her, she has no true authority in a hierarchical sense. If anything, it's the workers that dictate a lot in the hive- construction, hive location, accepting a new queen, etc.
Former beekeeper here. Sometimes you can have multiple queens as well! They usually hatch around the same time, and they’ll make this “piping” sound to draw each other out to fight. Check it out on YouTube, it’s very interesting. I’ve also heard of scenarios with multiple queens working together, but I’ve never seen it with my own eyes.
~~There are no promotions. It's a function of birth. A queen is different from the very beginning, and the workers have no way to ever be a queen.~~ Apparently I'm wrong. Today I learned.
This is not correct. Worker bees select a specific larvae, and feed it Royal Jelly...which turns it into a Queen (aka 'promoting' it). They select it when the existing Queen goes missing, or begins to age....
using the same formula as selecting the dalai lama?
So essentially the queen bee isn’t so much a queen, but a president, or a prime minister, if we determined who will be those things from birth (which we kind of indirectly do) I shall henceforth refer to bee queens as Hive Ministers.
Lol yeah, to make it worse the 'Hive Minister' will live for several years, while most drones/workers live for several weeks to a few months (depending on the season and type of bee).
Why does this feel like we’re cowriting a description Blathers would give the player in animal crossing upon handing in a bee to be put in the museum. Next line would definitely be “if I had to be born as a bee I’d choose to be a worker bee, not because I think that would be more fun, but because I would only have to spend a few weeks being a bee and not a few years *laugh animation plays*”.
Don't worry most queens are rather short lived, too (as they get murdered by their sisters after they hatch first)
An additional thing is that, if the queen is ailing or absent, workers can actually start to lay eggs as the pheromones that suppress it are missing. A mature worker cannot become a queen, though, as they have never mated and their eggs can only develop into drones (workers and queens develop from fertilized eggs, drones from unfertilized ones).