Today’s letter Q is for Queen, of course. For a long time folks thought a beehive must be ruled by a male bee. In fact, in ancient Egypt the bee was a symbol for the King of Lower Egypt. It wasn’t until the 1600’s that the biologist Jan Swammerdam provided evidence that the Queen was, in fact, female and the mother of all worker bees.

Another myth that continues is that the Queen rules the hive. This is not the case, as the workers have more direct control over the hive behavior. Workers collectively decide whether to build worker or drone comb, as well as when to lay eggs and when to swarm. Workers will eat eggs if they don’t believe the hive has enough resources available, and they will direct the queen where to lay within the hive.

The queen mates only when she first emerges, hardening in the hive for about week before taking her mating flights. She mates with as many as 20 drones while flying, sometimes across multiple flights. This diversity of “dads” provides a variety of workers with different strengths and tendencies, which is helps maintain a healthy hive. The queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day, deciding whether to lay a fertilized egg, producing a female, or an unfertilized egg, producing a male, based on the size of the honeycomb cell.

Without a queen, of course, the hive will die. Workers may eventual start laying eggs, but these “laying workers” can only lay unfertilized eggs, which become drones. This is the last gasp of a dying hive to share their genetic material with the world.

May you prosper and find honey.