A queen mates during the first 1-2 weeks of her adult life. She can take multiple mating flights and mated with several males – on average 12-15. Increasing the genetic diversity of the colony is important for colony productivity and disease resistance.
A queen mates only once in her life and stores the sperm she collects in a special organ which she draws from to lay eggs for the rest of her life.
Fertilization occurs once and only when the queen is able to store so much sperm inside her that she can then fertilize the eggs for the rest of her life. Bees give unimaginable importance to fertilization that occurs through the nuptial flight.
Throughout most of her life, the queen's job is to lay eggs. However, early in a queen's life, she makes several mating flights. On these flights, she mates -- in midair -- with anywhere from one to more than 40 drones. The average number of drones with which a queen mates is 12.
From the time she emerges from her queen cell, it takes at least four weeks for a queen to fully mature, mate and start to lay. During this month-long period, it is possible to disrupt the delicate balance between the queen and her colony (remember, these bees are not her daughters but usually sisters).
When a virgin queen flies to a site where thousands of male honey bees may be waiting, she mates with several males in flight. A male drone will mount the queen and insert his endophallus, ejaculating semen.
A colony of honeybees only has one queen. If there is more than one, they will fight to the death. The queen is the only bee in the hive that can lay eggs and is the mother of all the other bees.
Once she has mated, she flies back to the hive to assume her royal role...and beekeepers now call her a mated queen. It will take her a few days to start laying eggs, during which her abdomen grows larger, making flight clumsy and difficult.
The drones from neighboring beehives will collect in swarms in the sky about 200 to 300 feet in the air. The queen sets out for her mating flight and the drone swarm finds her. The drones use their large eyes to spot the queen. The queen will mate with several drones, around 10 to 20.
Queen honey bees live on average 1–2 years whereas workers live on average 15–38 days in the summer and 150–200 days in the winter.
When a queen bee dies the worker bees will become agitated and more aggressive with no direction from their monarch. Because of the lack of a queen substance pheromone, worker bees will begin to lay eggs. As worker bees are unable to fertilize eggs the hive begins to produce too many male drones.
Female worker bees and the queen bee have the same genes...and any female larva has the potential to be a queen.
During a mating flight, a queen bee can fly a considerable distance depending on whether she is able to find drones with which to mate. Also, the drones themselves are flying between one to three miles from their hives to nearby drone congregation areas where they too are looking for queens.
Conventional wisdom is that:- once mated, a queen will not fly other than with a swarm, but there are a few exceptions of mated queens flying that mainly go un-noticed.
The time taken for matings varies widely from 10 minutes to 80 minutes. The sperm is transferred within the first 2 minutes of mating, and the bees are in a rather vulnerable position, so why do they continue for so long?
During the winter season, a queen forms a new colony by laying eggs within each cell inside a honeycomb. Fertilized eggs will hatch into female worker bees, while unfertilized eggs will become drones or honey bee males.
Queens are raised from the same fertilised female eggs as workers bees. A newly hatched female larva is neither queen or worker caste. There are small differences in the composition of royal jelly fed to larvae destined to be a queen or a worker. The variation in diet starts from the time of larvae hatching.
Honey bees are known to have barbed stingers and will sting only once and then die. While this is true of most honey bees, the queen honey bee usually has a smooth stinger and can sting multiple times.
There's no such thing as 'king bee' in bees.
A queen bee's individual mating flight lasts approximately five to thirty minutes, depending on how quickly she encounters drones, and on the weather. Warmer weather usually means that more drones are flying, so the queen may stay out flying longer if the conditions are favorable.
In order to be ensure the future survival of honey bees, the honey bee queen must mate with drones, so that she can lay eggs from which new female workers and queens can be raised. To do this, the queen leaves the nest or hive and embarks on a 'mating flight' to meet with potential drones.
Queens went on mating flights for 1 to 5 days, with an average of 2.2 +/- 0.98 day 16. In easier-to-comprehend terms this means that about 70% of all the queens went on mating flights on 1 to 3 days. Since it's often quoted that queens leave the hive 'once to mate' this might be a surprise to some.
But today is the day male bees live for. As soon as they pick up the scent of a virgin queen from another hive, the chase is on. She flies as fast as she can and the drones race to chase her, ensuring that only the most fit males get a chance to mate with her.