How long does a queen bee live?
Beekeeping
The queen is the only sexually mature female in the hive and all of the female worker bees and male drones are her offspring. The queen may live for up to three years or more and may be capable of laying half a million eggs or more in her lifetime. At the peak of the breeding season, late spring to summer, a good queen may be capable of laying 3,000 eggs in one day, more than her own body weight. This would be exceptional however; a prolific queen might peak at 2,000 eggs a day, but a more average queen might lay just 1,500 eggs per day. The queen is raised from a normal worker egg, but is fed a larger amount of royal jelly than a normal worker bee, resulting in a radically different growth and metamorphosis. The queen influences the colony by the production and dissemination of a variety of pheromones or "queen substances". One of these chemicals suppresses the development of ovaries in all the female worker bees in the hive and prevents them from laying eggs.
Augochlora pura
"Augochlora pura" has a flight season from early April through September, but nests are active only from early May to early August. Unlike other halictids, "A. pura" does not take flight in response to warm days later in the fall. There are two to three generations per year in nature, as limited by the seasons, but bees in the laboratory have been shown to produce at least six generations per year. There is no reason to believe these generations would not continue indefinitely. In nature, females become active in August and September, mate, and remain in a state of ovarian diapause on moist soil beneath rotting logs. In contrast, all males die in the fall. Overwintered females found new nests in April. Their offspring emerge in June, and proceed to found nests of their own by the end of the month. Males tend to emerge from the first cells built, and females emerge shortly thereafter. Males in the laboratory live on average about 14.88 days.
Coffee borer beetle
The maturation of the insect (from egg to adult) lasts between 24 and 45 days, varying according to the weather. Usually, the female drills the berry through the central disc, although it can enter through the side walls if the fruit is dry. Two days after the access, the beetle lays 35–50 eggs, which produce 13 females for each male. The lifespan for females is 35–190 days and for males 40 days. The new insects mate inside the seed. Some females lay the eggs in the same coffee plant, others colonize new ones. The males never leave the fruit.
Royal jelly
The honey bee queens and workers represent one of the most striking examples of environmentally controlled phenotypic polymorphism. Even if two larvae had identical DNA, one raised to be a worker, the other a queen, the two adults would be strongly differentiated across a wide range of characteristics including anatomical and physiological differences, longevity, and reproductive capacity. Queens constitute the female sexual caste and have large active ovaries, whereas female workers have only rudimentary, inactive ovaries and are functionally sterile. The queen–worker developmental divide is controlled epigenetically by differential feeding with royal jelly; this appears to be due specifically to the protein royalactin. A female larva destined to become a queen is fed large quantities of royal jelly; this triggers a cascade of molecular events resulting in development of a queen. It has been shown that this phenomenon is mediated by an epigenetic modification of DNA known as CpG methylation. Silencing the expression of an enzyme that methylates DNA in newly hatched larvae led to a royal jelly-like effect on the larval developmental trajectory; the majority of individuals with reduced DNA methylation levels emerged as queens with fully developed ovaries. This finding suggests that DNA methylation in honey bees allows the expression of epigenetic information to be differentially altered by nutritional input.
Swarming (honey bee)
Worker bees create "queen cups" throughout the year. When the hive is getting ready to swarm, the queen lays eggs into the queen cups. New queens are raised and the hive may swarm as soon as the queen cells are capped and before the new virgin queens emerge from their queen cells. A laying queen is too heavy to fly long distances. Therefore, the workers will stop feeding her before the anticipated swarm date and the queen will stop laying eggs. Swarming creates an interruption in the brood cycle of the original colony.
During the swarm preparation, scout bees will simply find a nearby location for the swarm to cluster. When a honey bee swarm emerges from a hive they do not fly far at first. They may gather in a tree or on a branch only a few metres from the hive. There, they cluster about the queen and send 20 - 50 scout bees out to find suitable new nest locations.
This intermediate stop is not for permanent habitation and they will normally leave within a few hours to a suitable location. It is from this temporary location that the cluster will determine the final nest site based on the level of excitement of the dances of the scout bees. It is unusual if a swarm clusters for more than three days at an intermediate stop.
Mischocyttarus drewseni
Once wasps emerge as mature adults, they spend the first 2–3 days on the nest doing very little. After the first 3 idle days, workers can be told from non-workers because workers stay on the nest longer. A wasp that leaves the nest for any reason immediately after those 3 days is considered a non-worker. Lifetime in the nest, then, seems directly dependent on ones role: queens lived an average of 61 days, workers lived about 31 days, non-workers survived for about 5 days, and males only survived about 4.8 days. This is considered evidence that the caste system determines the individual wasp’s life course. Note that these numbers are based entirely on the number of days that a wasp is seen in the nest. In some cases, including males, the wasps live the majority of their lives outside of the nest.
Asian giant hornet
An inseminated queen begins to create relatively small cells in which she raises around 40 small workers. Workers do not begin to work outside of the hive until July. Queens participate in activities outside the hive until mid-July, when they stay inside the nest and allow workers to do extranidal activities. Early August marks a fully developed nest, containing three combs holding 500 cells and 100 workers. After mid-September, no more eggs are laid and the focus shifts to caring for larvae. The queens die in late October.
Queen bee
The term "queen bee" is typically used to refer to an adult, mated female (gyne) that lives in a honey bee colony or hive; she is usually the mother of most, if not all, of the bees in the beehive. Queens developed from larvae selected by worker bees and specially fed in order to become sexually mature. There is normally only one adult, mated queen in a hive, in which case the bees will usually follow and fiercely protect her.
Queen bee
If a queen suddenly dies, the workers will attempt to create an "emergency queen" by selecting several brood cells where a larva has just emerged which are then flooded with royal jelly. The worker bees then build larger queen cells over the normal-sized worker cells which protrude vertically from the face of the brood comb. Emergency queens are usually smaller and less prolific than normal queens.
Paratrigona subnuda
Daughter queen bees, also known as gynes, leave the colony for the new colony during nesting. This is partly due to the physogastric queens who are unable to move to swarm to the new colony. There is also contact between the mother queen and the new queen that can last for weeks or months. This phenomenon is a consequence of "P. subnuda"'s single mate behaviors. Under single mating, there is lower conflict between daughter and mother queens. This is due to the fact that there is increased relatedness between daughter queen and the mother queen’s progeny. When males are produced by the queen, workers will shift their interest to the daughter queen because they have higher relatedness to the new queen’s sons. Unlike other tropical bees, stingless bee colonies only reproduce once a year or sometimes even less.
Beekeeping
Most of the bees in a hive are female worker bees. At the height of summer when activity in the hive is frantic and work goes on non-stop, the life of a worker bee may be as short as 6 weeks; in late autumn, when no brood is being raised and no nectar is being harvested, a young bee may live for 16 weeks, right through the winter.
Western honey bee
Once she has dispatched her rivals, the new queen, the only fertile female, lays all the eggs for the old colony, which her mother has left. Virgin females are able to lay eggs, which develop into males (a trait shared with wasps, bees, and ants because of haplodiploidy). However, she requires a mate to produce female offspring, which comprise 90% or more of bees in the colony at any given time. Thus, the new queen goes on one or more nuptial flights, each time mating with 1–17 drones. Once she has finished mating, usually within two weeks of emerging, she remains in the hive, laying eggs.
Dolichovespula adulterina
Regardless of the host species, the queen "D. adulterina "invades the host colony around the same time that the first workers start to emerge. The invasive queen waits approximately 10 days before killing the host queen and laying her eggs. Males emerge in late July and new queens emerge in early August. After a few days, the males and females will leave for their mating flights. The colony then terminates in mid-August. The inquiline queen dies by mid-July, if not earlier from fights with host workers. After the colony ceases, the queen will enter hibernation in a sheltered area. She will then emerge and feed on nectar and malaxate arthropods until she attempts to usurp a host colony. On average, the colony cycle for a successful parasitic queen is about 2.8 months.
Nosema apis
"Nosema" spores are spread to other colony members through fecal matter. The disease impairs the digestion of pollen, thereby shortening the life of the bee. A greater proportion of worker bees become infected than drones or queens, probably due to the comb-cleaning activities of young bees in which drones and queens do not participate. "Nosema"-infected bees do not attend or feed the queen to the same extent as healthy bees, which helps the queen to escape infection. When the queen becomes infected, her ovaries degenerate and her egg-laying capacity is reduced due to atrophy of the oocytes. Queens that become infected by the parasite during the brood-rearing season are superseded by the bees.
Tetragonisca angustula
Like many other stingless bee species, "T. angustula" workers take part in different activities based on their age. The average lifespan of the worker bees is around 21 days, but many live up to about 60 days. The first tasks that worker bees perform include courting the queen (surround her in the hive) and helping with oviposition (see section on nursing). Young bees (1 to about 15 days old) also assist with putting cerumen on brood combs and cleaning the nest. Foraging behavior starts about 16 days after a worker emerges and will continue for the rest of its life. Grooming behavior and resin manipulation are most common in ‘older’ bees, about 20 to 55 days old.
Myrmica rubra
This ant's colonies have a polygyne form and can include up to one hundred queens per nest. These queens will have gathered together after their nuptial flight, formed a nest and laid their eggs in it. The species is also polydomous, with many nest sites per individual colony. The queens can live up to fifteen years. Nuptial flights take place normally in late July to mid-August in Europe. Hundreds of young queens and males take to the air to mate together. Afterwards, the males die and the queens shed their wings to make a new colony. No nuptial flights have been witnessed yet from this species where it is living in North America.
Queen bee
Queen rearing is the process by which beekeepers raise queen bees from young fertilized worker bee larvae. The most commonly used method is known as the Doolittle method. In the Doolittle method, the beekeeper grafts larvae, which are 24 hours or less of age, into a bar of queen cell cups. The queen cell cups are placed inside of a cell-building colony. A cell-building colony is a strong, well-fed, queenless colony that feeds the larva royal jelly and develops the larvae into queen bees.
Beekeeping
Drones are the largest bees in the hive (except for the queen), at almost twice the size of a worker bee. Note in the picture that they have much larger eyes than the workers have, presumably to better locate the queen during the mating flight. They do not work, do not forage for pollen or nectar, are unable to sting, and have no other known function than to mate with new queens and fertilize them on their mating flights. A bee colony generally starts to raise drones a few weeks before building queen cells so they can supersede a failing queen or prepare for swarming. When queen-raising for the season is over, bees in colder climates drive drones out of the hive to die, biting and tearing their legs and wings.
Bombus sylvarum
The flight period lasts from about April to September. The queen bee emerges from hibernation in the spring. She makes a nest on or slightly below the surface of the ground among open vegetation. An old mouse or vole nest may be used. By summer, the nest may contain around 100 worker bees. Each nest requires about of suitable habitat.
Drone (bee)
Mating between a single drone and the queen lasts less than 5 seconds, and it is often completed within 1–2 seconds. Mating occurs mid-flight, and 10–40 m above ground. Since the queen mates with 5-19 drones, and drones die after mating, each drone must make the most of his single shot. The drone makes first contact from above the queen, his thorax above her abdomen, straddling her. He then grasps her with all six legs, and everts the endophallus into her opened sting chamber. If the queen’s sting chamber is not fully opened, mating is unsuccessful, so some males that mount the queen do not transfer semen. Once the endophallus has been everted, the drone is paralyzed, flipping backwards as he ejaculates. The process of ejaculation is explosive—semen is blasted through the queen’s sting chamber and into the oviduct. The process is sometimes audible to the human ear, akin to a "popping" sound. The ejaculation is so powerful that it ruptures the endophallus, disconnecting the drone from the queen. The bulb of the endophallus is broken off inside of the queen during mating—so drones mate only once, and die shortly after. The leftover penis remaining in the queen’s vagina is referred to as the “mating sign”. The plug will not prevent the next drone from mating with the same queen, but may prevent semen from flowing out of the vagina.
Bombus impatiens
A gyne mates with a male bee near the end of the hives life cycle. They rest on the ground or on vegetation in order to mate and the mating lasts from 10 to 80 minutes. In order to increase the probability of his genes getting passed down safely, the male mates for a certain amount of time to let his sperm harden during mating. Soon thereafter the gynes hibernate. The following spring they emerge from hibernation and set about to get strong on nectar and to find a suitable old mouse or chipmunk hole to begin a colony. The first thing she builds is a honeypot, then she fills it with food (nectar/pollen), making it easier to feed her new brood, which are raised in paper cells she builds. The queens lay about 2000 eggs in one season, but only half of them will survive to become full adults.
Bombus frigidus
Like most bumblebees, "B. frigidus" has a eusocial seasonal colony in which the queen lives for a year. During the winter, the queen will stay in a small chamber in the ground, which she had previously found or dug for herself, called a hibernaculum. As soon as the snow melts
around mid May, the queen will begin to search for a nest site. "B. frigidus" queens tend to leave their hibernacula earlier than other arctic bees. Also, arctic bees have ovaries which develop faster than those of temperate bees. This allows arctic bees to start their colonies faster, which is necessary due to the shorter time between winters in arctic regions. The queens fly close to the
ground, often stopping to examine a potential nesting site. While the queen is searching, she will not carry any pollen. Once a suitable site is found, she will begin to collect pollen to make a brood clump and feed the brood. She will also start to build a wax cup, called a honey pot, to store the pollen and nectar. When the nest is ready, she will lay eggs on the brood clump and incubate them with her abdomen. The queen will remain in the nest until she needs more food or until the eggs hatch. The eggs will hatch about four days after being laid, but it takes about four weeks for the first workers to become adults. The colony will continue to grow during the summer, and the queen will continue to produce eggs, rarely leaving the nest. The workers will supply her with nectar, maintain the colony, and help her produce a group of male offspring. New queens are produced shortly thereafter. The reproductive bees will leave the colony to mate around early September. After mating, the males will die and the new queens will obtain nectar for a short time before finding a new hibernaculum
for the winter.
Honey bee
Workers have two sets of chromosomes. They are produced from an egg that the queen has selectively fertilized from stored sperm. Workers typically develop in 21 days. A typical colony may contain as many as 60,000 worker bees. Workers exhibit a wider range of behaviors than either queens or drones. Their duties change upon the age of the bee in the following order (beginning with cleaning out their own cell after eating through their capped brood cell): feed brood, receive nectar, clean hive, guard duty, and foraging. Some workers engage in other specialized behaviors, such as "undertaking" (removing corpses of their nestmates from inside the hive).
Western honey bee
In most climates, western honey bees swarm in the spring and early summer, when there is an abundance of blooming flowers from which to collect nectar and pollen. In response to these favorable conditions, the hive creates one to two dozen new queens. Just as the pupal stages of these "daughter queens" are nearly complete, the old queen and approximately two-thirds of the adult workers leave the colony in a swarm, traveling some distance to find a new location suitable for building a hive (e.g., a hollow tree trunk). In the old colony, the daughter queens often start "piping", just prior to emerging as adults, and, when the daughter queens eventually emerge, they fight each other until only one remains; the survivor then becomes the new queen. If one of the sisters emerges before the others, she may kill her siblings while they are still pupae, before they have a chance to emerge as adults.
Beekeeping
Inevitably, the queen begins to falter, and the bees decide to replace her by creating a new queen from one of her worker eggs. They may do this because she has been damaged (lost a leg or an antenna), because she has run out of sperm and cannot lay fertilized eggs (has become a "drone laying queen"), or because her pheromones have dwindled to where they cannot control all the bees in the hive. At this juncture, the bees produce one or more queen cells by modifying existing worker cells that contain a normal female egg. They then pursue one of two ways to replace the queen: supersedure, replacing or superseding the queen without swarming, or swarm cell production, dividing the hive into two colonies through swarming.
Black garden ant
"Lasius niger" colonies can reach in size up to around 40,000 workers in rare cases but 4,000–7,000 is around average. A "Lasius niger" queen can live up to around 15 years and it has been claimed that some have lived for 30 years. "Lasius niger" queens while in the early stages of founding can have two to three other queens in the nest. They will tolerate each other until the first workers come, then it is most likely they will fight until one queen remains. In certain circumstances, it is possible that there can be multiple queens in a single colony if they are founding somewhat near each other and eventually their two tunnels connect.. Under laboratory conditions, workers can live at least 4 years.
Princess parrot
The princess parrot can make loud calls. Their life span is thought to be as long as 30 years. Under the right circumstances they are able to bond to more than one member of the host family. These birds have a short range of mimicking ability, yet some have the ability to "talk". They are a favourite among many aviculturists and pet owners because of their looks and personality. Their diet consists of reasonable sized seeds and grasses that have seeds. They can be constipated if given bread or seeds that are small or become wet, they can become ill if seed bowls are contaminated by rats or mice so are best fed on an inverted ceramic pot with the bowl on top not wider than the top as they will dislodge the feed bowl.
Honeymoon
Another practical source for the term comes from the early days in the life of a honey bee queen. Immediately after her birth within a hive, a queen bee leaves the hive over the course of several days, to meet up with multiple drones in separate drone congregation areas. She is inseminated with a lifetime of sperm, and then returns to the hive to remain there the rest of her life, laying eggs. The queen essentially goes away for a "honey-moon" and returns back, ready to live the rest of her life. The centuries old practice of beekeeping may have led to other folklore related to this "going away" before starting a life "in the hive" (back at home).
Plebeia remota
A study showed that a typical nest would rear between 1-5 gynes during an observation period that varied between 6 and 18 months. However, it was also noted that on occasion "P. remota" may produce a high number of gynes, up to 46. Another thing to note is that gynes can be produced in the same cells that give rise to the worker class. The only difference between the queen and the workers is that queens are generally bigger, however this is not always the case since it has been documented that queens can be the same size as the workers. The same study also showed that there is no correlation between the queen's size and whether they are accepted or have a successful mating. Queens emerge always attractive, meaning that they cause changes in the intranidal behavior of the workers. Normally after gynes are produced, a majority of them are killed by the workers. The ones that survive can be kept alive in cerumen chambers protected by a barrier of wax called the royal camber. It is those survivors who will go on and form new colonies.
Royal jelly
Royal jelly is harvested by stimulating colonies with movable frame hives to produce queen bees. Royal jelly is collected from each individual queen cell (honeycomb) when the queen larvae are about four days old. These are the only cells in which large amounts are deposited; when royal jelly is fed to worker larvae, it is fed directly to them, and they consume it as it is produced, while the cells of queen larvae are "stocked" with royal jelly much faster than the larvae can consume it. Therefore, only in queen cells is the harvest of royal jelly practical. A well-managed hive during a season of 5–6 months can produce approximately 500 g of royal jelly. Since the product is perishable, producers must have immediate access to proper cold storage (e.g., a household refrigerator or freezer) in which the royal jelly is stored until it is sold or conveyed to a collection center. Sometimes honey or beeswax is added to the royal jelly, which is thought to aid its preservation.
Worker bee
The life of all honey bees starts as an egg, which is laid by the queen in the bottom of a wax cell in the brood area of a hive. A worker egg hatches after three days into a larva. Nurse bees feed it royal jelly at first, then pollen and honey for six days. It then becomes an inactive pupa.
Queen (butterfly)
Females lay small white eggs one at a time on larval host plants, usually members of the milkweed subfamily Asclepiadoideae. The egg hatches into a black caterpillar with transverse white stripes and yellow spots, and three pairs of long, black filaments. The caterpillar feeds on the host plant and sequesters chemicals that make it distasteful to some predators. It then goes through six instars, after which the larva finds a suitable spot to pupate. The adult emerges 7 to 10 days afterwards. The queen butterfly has multiple generations per year.
Emperor penguin
The only penguin species that breeds during the Antarctic winter, emperor penguins trek over the ice to breeding colonies which generally range from a few hundred to several thousand individuals. The female lays a single egg, which then is incubated for just over two months by the male while the female returns to the sea to feed; parents subsequently take turns foraging at sea and caring for their chick in the colony. The entire process is repeated annually. The typical lifespan of the emperor penguin is around 20 years in the wild, although observations suggest that some individuals may live considerably longer, up to 50 years of age.
Bombus fervidus
Male bumblebees, also known as drones, have a purely reproductive purpose. In the fall, males and newly hatched queens mate before the weather cools. Each future queen mates only once and stores the sperm for the remainder of her life, using it to produce all the subsequent female progeny. After mating, young queens hibernate underground until the spring while all the other bees will die. The queens then emerge from hibernation and feed on pollen and nectar until they can lay their first brood of 8 to 10 eggs. Before laying the eggs, they build a nest out of grass and deposit honey into a wax honey pot that she made. They make and deposit honey in the honey pot after collecting enough pollen. Breeding occurs in the summer months. Most workers live for a brief period of time due to the intensity of their work, while queens live for 12 months on average. "B. fervidus" workers are responsible for making the honey that the queen and developing brood eat. The workers chew pollen and mix it with their saliva to make the honey. Since they need ample pollen for honey, workers spend a lot of time foraging for nectar and pollen, simultaneously pollinating flowers. When a worker emerges from its cocoon, it will devote most of its time toward developing the brood and consequently building a larger nest out of grass to accommodate the growing colony. If the colony grows too big, then new queens are sometimes killed before it is time for them to mate. Males have a purely reproductive purpose in the nest.
Allodapini
Many allodapine species exhibit very simple forms of social organization, without clear queen or worker castes. For this reason it was long thought that they had only recently evolved forms of social living. However, molecular phylogenetic studies show that social living is ancestral for the tribe as a whole and has been in place for about 50 million years. An ancient origin of sociality in this group helps explain very sophisticated forms of social communication in some species, such as pheromonal regulation of reproduction and complex forms of kin recognition. The origin of queen and workers castes in allodapine bees is relatively recent, much less than 40 million years ago, compared with the honeybees, bumble bees and stingless bees, where true queen and worker castes evolved about 100 million years ago.
Pogonomyrmex occidentalis
Mature colonies consist of up to 20,000 workers and one queen. A queen can live up to 40 years, and many colonies survive for 20 years. Colonies of the close relative, "P. owyheei", contain 1000–3000 brood items and can produce 1000 reproductives, or alates, in a year. A colony inhabits a nest that is up to deep. The queen stays at the bottom of the nest, and workers usually relocate themselves and brood within the nest, capturing safe levels of heat. A colony's nest is topped by an irregularly conical nest mound that can be more than in diameter. The composition, shape, and size of the mound differ across plant environments. The mounds of most colonies are surrounded by an area devoid of vegetation, and so do not burn during fires. The soil in the mound is drier than that in the surrounding denuded area. Bigger "P. occidentalis" colonies (in number of workers) have bigger mounds.
Queen (butterfly)
The queen butterfly ("Danaus gilippus") is a North and South American butterfly in the family Nymphalidae with a wingspan of . It is orange or brown with black wing borders and small white forewing spots on its dorsal wing surface, and reddish ventral wing surface fairly similar to the dorsal surface. The ventral hindwings have black veins and small white spots in a black border. The male has a black androconial scent patch on its dorsal hindwings. It is found throughout the tropics and into the temperate regions of the Americas, Asia and Africa. It can be found in meadows, fields, marshes, deserts, and at the edges of forests.
Western honey bee
Although the average lifespan of a queen in most subspecies is three to five years, reports from the German-European black bee subspecies previously used for beekeeping indicate that a queen can live up to eight years. Because a queen's store of sperm is depleted near the end of her life, she begins laying more unfertilized eggs; for this reason, beekeepers often replace queens every year or two.
Sternocera aequisignata
The female lays eggs singly in soil at the base of the host plants. Each female is capable of laying 5–12 eggs, which take 2 months to hatch. The hatched larva has five instar stages. Stages 1 to 4 remain in the soil for 3–4 months where they feed upon the roots of the adult host plants. The 5th instar can be found above ground, until it returns underground again to pupate. Adult beetles have a short lifespan of 1–3 weeks, though the complete life cycle takes up to two years.
Bombus ternarius
In late summer, the queen switches to laying unfertilized eggs, which develop into male drones that are meant for reproduction. Towards the end of her life, the queen reverts to laying fertilized eggs. These eggs give rise to new female queens. The new adult queens forage for food. They use the nest for shelter, but the new queens do not contribute to the nests food reserves. During this time, the new queens mate with roaming male drones, build up reserves of body fat, and fill their nectar crop with honey to survive winter hibernation. The rest of the colony, including the old queen, dies in mid-autumn.
Royal jelly
Royal jelly is secreted from the glands in the heads of worker bees and is fed to all bee larvae, whether they are destined to become drones (males), workers (sterile females), or queens (fertile females). After three days, the drone and worker larvae are no longer fed with royal jelly, but queen larvae continue to be fed this special substance throughout their development.
Western honey bee
Like other insects that undergo complete metamorphosis, the western honey bee has four distinct life stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. The complex social structure of honey bee hives means that all of these life stages occur simultaneously throughout much of the year. The queen deposits a single egg into each cell of a honeycomb prepared by worker bees. The egg hatches into a legless, eyeless larva fed by "nurse" bees (worker bees who maintain the interior of the colony). After about a week, the larva is sealed in its cell by the nurse bees and begins its pupal stage. After another week, it emerges as an adult bee. It is common for defined regions of the comb to be filled with young bees (also called "brood"), while others are filled with pollen and honey stores.
Bombus centralis
The bumblebee lives in prairies or river valleys. The hibernating queens appear in late May and start building a nest, often in disused rodent nests. About a month later, the first workers emerge. The nest declines in September, and all the bees, except the new queens, die. The bees forage on various plant taxa, such as wild onions, rabbitbrush, thistles, goldenbushes, coyote mints, penstemons, and phacelias.
Queen bee
The term "queen bee" can be more generally applied to any dominant reproductive female in a colony of a eusocial bee species other than honey bees. However, as in the Brazilian stingless bee "Schwarziana quadripunctata", a single nest may have multiple queens or even dwarf queens, ready to replace a dominant queen in a case of sudden death.
Lasioglossum zephyrum
"Lasioglossum zephyrum" nests consist of less than 20 individuals. During the spring, around April, new nests are established by one or more females. Some of these nest may never gain more members, and the female will remain solitary. If they do expand, the colony will reach its maximum size of 10–20 around August. Growth of the colony is gradual throughout the summer. Inseminated young queens overwinter in their nests so that the cycle may be repeated. However, overwintered queens are likely to die early on in the summer. After the death of an old queen, a new queen takes over within hours. "L. zephyrum" colonies have a high mortality rate, especially when inhabited by a solitary bee lacking guards.
Dynastes
The larval stage of "Dynastes hercules" will last one to two years, with the larva growing up to in length and weighing more than . Much of the life of the larva is spent tunneling through rotting wood. After the larval period, transformation into a pupa, and moulting, the beetle then emerges as an adult. Adults of most species can live from two to ten months and some can even live one or two years. Eastern Hercules beetles, "D. tityus", can live six to twenty-three months in captivity with a hibernation period. Western Hercules beetles, "D. grantii", tend to have a shorter adult lifespan in the wild (two to four months), but in captivity they live for about the same amount of time as the eastern species. It has also been noted that captive longevity is possible without a hibernation period.
Flea
Once the flea reaches adulthood, its primary goal is to find blood and then to reproduce. Female fleas can lay 5000 or more eggs over their life, permitting rapid increase in numbers. Generally speaking, an adult flea only lives for 2 or 3 months. Without a host to provide a blood meal, a flea's life can be as short as a few days. Under ideal conditions of temperature, food supply, and humidity, adult fleas can live for up to a year and a half. Completely developed adult fleas can live for several months without eating, so long as they do not emerge from their puparia. Optimum temperatures for the flea's life cycle are 21 °C to 30 °C (70 °F to 85 °F) and optimum humidity is 70%.
Trigona fuscipennis
The queen is the mother and the only bee in the hive that reproduces. Males are only produced when new queens are produced. Males and new queens leave the nest to find mates and then the males die and the mated queens start their own hive. Virgin queens accompany swarms of workers to new nest sites and males wait in anticipation, picking up on the odors the queen disperses throughout the nest. The new queen flies out for mating and is pursued by hundreds of males. The queen puts herself at risk during these matings as it exposes her to predation and many are killed.
Cloake board
Slide in floor in place: By sliding the floor into the Cloake board, the single functioning colony is now divided into two parts - a queenright lower colony and a queenless upper colony. The lower entrance is re-opened, allowing bees in the queenright section to exit the hive. When those bees return, they will do so to the upper entrance, but not be able to enter the lower colony. This results in a higher population of bees in the upper colony. The upper colony is typically left alone for 24 hours for a settling period, in which the bees determine that they are queenless, and prepare to replace their missing queen.
Solenopsis molesta
"S. molesta" queens are bigger than the workers, being four to five millimeters long. Mating takes place from July to late fall. Both the queens and "S. molesta" drones have wings, and mating takes place while flying. Queens sometimes fly with a worker or two clinging to their bodies, presumably to help out right away when the queen finds a suitable place for a colony. Queens can lay anywhere from 27 and 387 eggs per day, but the average number of eggs laid per day is 105. It takes about 52 days for an egg to become a fully mobile worker. Young "Solenopsis molesta" spends about 21 days in the larval stage when the weather is suitable.
Honey bee
Queen honey bees are created when worker bees feed a single female larvae an exclusive diet of a food called "royal jelly". Queens are produced in oversized cells and develop in only 16 days; they differ in physiology, morphology, and behavior from worker bees. In addition to the greater size of the queen, she has a functional set of ovaries, and a spermatheca, which stores and maintains sperm after she has mated. "Apis" queens practice polyandry, with one female mating with multiple males. The highest documented mating frequency for an "Apis" queen is in "Apis nigrocincta", where queens mate with an extremely high number of males with observed numbers of different matings ranging from 42 to 69 drones per queen. The sting of queens is not barbed like a worker's sting, and queens lack the glands that produce beeswax. Once mated, queens may lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. They produce a variety of pheromones that regulate behavior of workers, and helps swarms track the queen's location during the swarming.
Beekeeping
It was not until the 18th century that European natural philosophers undertook the scientific study of bee colonies and began to understand the complex and hidden world of bee biology. Preeminent among these scientific pioneers were Swammerdam, René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, Charles Bonnet, and François Huber. Swammerdam and Réaumur were among the first to use a microscope and dissection to understand the internal biology of honey bees. Réaumur was among the first to construct a glass walled observation hive to better observe activities within hives. He observed queens laying eggs in open cells, but still had no idea of how a queen was fertilized; nobody had ever witnessed the mating of a queen and drone and many theories held that queens were "self-fertile," while others believed that a vapor or "miasma" emanating from the drones fertilized queens without direct physical contact. Huber was the first to prove by observation and experiment that queens are physically inseminated by drones outside the confines of hives, usually a great distance away.
Bombus fervidus
"Bombus fervidus" queens lay eggs individually in cells within the nest that she builds herself. She first lays 8-10 eggs, one in each cell. When these eggs hatch, the larvae emerge and feed on honey for growth. The queen makes the honey for the larvae until they are ready to pupate, which is when the larva create cocoons for themselves where they stay to metamorphose into adults. Metamorphosis typically takes 16 to 25 days. Once the adults bees emerge from the cocoon, they are adult workers. This first generation of the brood that becomes workers are responsible for feeding the next generation of developing larvae and the queen. This ensures that the queen can focus on laying more eggs. Thus, each generation of "B. fervidus" is larger than the one before it.
Termite
The king grows only slightly larger after initial mating and continues to mate with the queen for life (a termite queen can live between 30 to 50 years); this is very different from ant colonies, in which a queen mates once with the male(s) and stores the gametes for life, as the male ants die shortly after mating. If a queen is absent, a termite king produces pheromones which encourage the development of replacement termite queens. As the queen and king are monogamous, sperm competition does not occur.
Tapinoma sessile
Little is known about the lifespan of the ant, though it has been shown that queens live at least 8 months (and probably much longer), workers at least a few months (and show every indication of living as long as queens), while males appear to live only approximately a week.
Bee
The life cycle of a bee, be it a solitary or social species, involves the laying of an egg, the development through several moults of a legless larva, a pupation stage during which the insect undergoes complete metamorphosis, followed by the emergence of a winged adult. Most solitary bees and bumble bees in temperate climates overwinter as adults or pupae and emerge in spring when increasing numbers of flowering plants come into bloom. The males usually emerge first and search for females with which to mate. The sex of a bee is determined by whether or not the egg is fertilised; after mating, a female stores the sperm, and determines which sex is required at the time each individual egg is laid, fertilised eggs producing female offspring and unfertilised eggs, males. Tropical bees may have several generations in a year and no diapause stage.
The egg is generally oblong, slightly curved and tapering at one end. In the case of solitary bees, each one is laid in a cell with a supply of mixed pollen and nectar next to it. This may be rolled into a pellet or placed in a pile and is known as mass provisioning. In social species of bee there is progressive provisioning with the larva being fed regularly while it grows. The nest varies from a hole in the ground or in wood, in solitary bees, to a substantial structure with wax combs in bumblebees and honey bees.
Polybia paulista
In a swarm-fonding paper wasp colony there are multiple queens depending on colony cycle and progression. Young queens tend to be morphologically similar to those of workers but some distinction can be found in older queens, generally with physically size. Queens have a life span of up to 1 year while workers life cycle last 30 days, with the first day of flight is around the 6th day) Queen dominance is attributed by social dominance, which is believed to be a behaviour and to shift colony from poling to monogyny. As well as queen physical size, where it is observed that younger queens replace older queens base on the development in size.
Schwarziana quadripunctata
The stingless bee "S. quadripunctata" varies in size from 6.0 to 7.5 millimeters. Worker bees and dwarf queens tend to be on the lower end of this spectrum while queens tend to lie on the higher end. Dwarf queens and workers tend to have an average weight of about 30 mg, but have been known to weigh as much as 40 mg or as little as 22 mg. Mated queens (those in charge of the nest) are, in comparison, much larger. The average queen bee weighs in at about 130 mg. However, some have been measured at over 160 mg, about a quarter of the weight of an average paperclip. Colonies contain a larger queen with greater fecundity than dwarf queens, causing the size discrepancy between the two. Unusual for most other eusocial insects, worker bees and dwarf queen bees tend to be similar in weight and size. The bees have a pale coloration of brown or reddish-brown with occasional yellow markings on the head. They maintain a punctate thorax and abdomen and a dorsal thoracic area sporting a few hairs. Glands are present on the head and thorax. The glands are larger in the heads of general worker bees and larger in the thorax for nursing worker bees.
Liometopum apiculatum
A study by Conconi "et al." (1983a) recorded the longevity of each of the reproductive castes and colony foundation of "L. apiculatum". In this study, they studied the life cycle of this species under different conditions of humidity, temperature, and substrate. Ant queens were placed either in glass tubes with moist cotton or in jars with soil, and were held at varying temperatures and relative humidity. Observations of the longevity of the various reproductive castes of "L. apiculatum" are as follows: males lived 15 to 37 days, virgin queens lived 19 to 268 days and fertilized queens lived 17 to 316 days. However, the last estimate is incredibly short for a queen, so either these ants are highly polygynous or they live much longer in the wild.
Western honey bee
Periodically, the colony determines that a new queen is needed. There are three general causes:
Regardless of the trigger, workers develop the larvae into queens by continuing to feed them royal jelly.
Queens are not raised in the typical horizontal brood cells of the honeycomb. A queen cell is larger and oriented vertically. If workers sense that an old queen is weakening, they produce emergency cells (known as supersedure cells) made from cells with eggs or young larvae and which protrude from the comb. When the queen finishes her larval feeding and pupates, she moves into a head-downward position and later chews her way out of the cell. At pupation, workers cap (seal) the cell. The queen asserts control over the worker bees by releasing a complex suite of pheromones, known as queen scent.
Ormond Aebi
For those who don't know, the queen excluder is a series of parallel wires placed closely together in a bee hive. It sits between the lower brood boxes and the upper supers, the boxes where the honey is stored. It functions to keep the queen from laying eggs in the boxes that contain the honey in them. She's too big to fit between the wires, but the worker bees can still come and go unimpeded.
Polistes dominula
Social hierarchies established within the colony can also influence individual "P. dominula"s longevity. Queens live longer than the males or the workers because the workers protect the queens from predators. The queen starts laying eggs in late March or early April, immediately after the "founding phase" of the newly built nest. Then, the colony disperses in the late summer, with only males and future foundresses produced instead of workers. Although individuals frequently cluster in groups (to overwinter), neither most nonreproductive males nor nonreproductive females survive the winter because their lifespans are shorter than a year (around 11 months) and they best survive during warm temperatures. Queens may survive the winter by hibernating.
Bombus flavifrons
The queen emerges from her hibernation at the end of March and often builds a nest in a disused mouse nest. The first workers appear about a month later. The nest declines at the end of August, and all the inhabitants die, except for the new queens, which hibernate in the earth. The bumblebee feeds on several flowering plants, most commonly those in Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Saxifragaceae, and Lamiaceae.
Tetragonula carbonaria
The queens cannot live alone and they are not transferred to a new nest until it has been fully prepared by workers. The new queen is the bee that makes the flight to the new nest, with the old queen remaining in the parent nest. When the old queen has died, mating swarms can occur at the established nest to replace the old queen with a young, unmated one.
Early bumblebee
The early bumblebee has a yearly life cycle; however, some early bumblebees are able to go through two cycles in a year if young queens skip hibernation and start a colony sooner. Generally, queens emerge from hibernation in early spring having been fertilized in late summer and they find a site to begin their nest. Colonies for early bumblebees tend to be on the smaller side and reach their maximum numbers earlier in the year than other species.
Bombus pensylvanicus
Bumble bees are generally host to a diversity of parasitoids in which the larvae grow inside the living host. The majority of parasitoids for bumble bees are flies and about 30 percent or more bees within the area can be infected. The process of parasitism consists of the fly attaching to the bee in flight and inserting her oviposits between the terga of the bee. The larval fly hatches within the bee host and develops by feeding on the host’s tissues. The bee lives for about two weeks before dying. The fly then pupates and spends the winter inside the bee, fully developed, before it emerges the following year. "Bombus pensylvanicus" is host to one "cuckoo" bumble bee species, "B. variabilis". Hibernating queen bumble bees are parasitized by a nematode worm, "Sphaerularia bombi". This parasite does not reduce life span, but instead causes the sterilization of the queen. It has been observed that affected queens forage two to three weeks later than those that are unaffected. Parasitic microorganisms also use bees as their host. Parasitic microorganisms’ effects may be lethal or sublethal. Pathogens may be transmitted within a colony or the bee may be infected at flowers. Tracheal mites ("Locustacarus buchneri") leads to reduced foraging efficiency by living in the bee’s alveoli. Certain protozoans and fungi consume the host tissue or gut substances of the bumble bee’s digestive tract, decreasing foraging efficiency, life span, and thus the colony fitness. Bees may contain symbiotic bacteria that offer some immunity to pathogens. Further exposure to habitat loss as well as pesticide exposure may lead to bee predisposition, thus promoting the species’ decay.
Black queen cell virus
Black Queen Cell Virus was originally described in 1977, but its genome was not sequenced until 2000. BQCV can currently be found most commonly in Australia and parts of South Africa. BQCV visibly affects the pupae of queen bees, causing them first to turn yellow and then black, and eventually die. These pupae come from queen bees that seem healthy and show no symptoms of being infected with this virus, as it only manifests itself with visible symptoms in the larvae. Although only the larvae are visibly affected by this disease, adults can also be infected, but asymptomatically. Transmission occurs by a parasite called "Nosema apis", which lives in the intestines of honey bees. BQCV can also be transmitted from nurse bees to larvae when they feed, and from hive to hive when the bees travel between them and when infected queen bees are distributed to other hives, There are no vaccines or treatment forms available to treat bees infected with this virus, therefore sanitation is the best way to prevent the spread. Sanitation practices include replacing the comb of the hive and requeening. Requeening simply means that the queen of the hive is replaced with a new, and in the case of infected hives, healthy queen.
Queen bee
When conditions are favorable for swarming, the queen will start laying eggs in queen cups. A virgin queen will develop from a fertilized egg. The young queen larva develops differently because it is more heavily fed royal jelly, a protein-rich secretion from glands on the heads of young workers. If not for being heavily fed royal jelly, the queen larva would develop into a regular worker bee. All bee larvae are fed some royal jelly for the first few days after hatching but only queen larvae are fed the jelly exclusively. As a result of the difference in diet, the queen will develop into a sexually mature female, unlike the worker bees.
Killer whale
Female killer whales begin to mature at around the age of 10 and reach peak fertility around 20, experiencing periods of polyestrous cycling separated by non-cycling periods of three to 16 months. Females can often breed until age 40, followed by a rapid decrease in fertility. As such, orcas are among the few animals that undergo menopause and live for decades after they have finished breeding. The lifespans of wild females average 50 years. Some are claimed to have lived substantially longer: Granny (J2) was estimated by some researchers to have been as old as 105 years at the time of her death, though a biopsy sample indicated her age as 65 to 80 years.
Queen bee
Supersedure may be forced by a beekeeper, for example by clipping off one of the queen's middle or posterior legs. This makes her unable to properly place her eggs at the bottom of the brood cell; the workers detect this and then rear replacement queens. When a new queen becomes available, the workers kill the reigning queen by "balling" her, clustering tightly around her. Death through balling is accomplished by surrounding the queen bee and raising her body temperature, causing her to overheat and die. Balling is often a problem for beekeepers attempting to introduce a replacement queen.
Queen bee
A virgin queen is a queen bee that has not mated with a drone. Virgins are intermediate in size between workers and mated, laying queens, and are much more active than the latter. They are hard to spot while inspecting a frame, because they run across the comb, climbing over worker bees if necessary, and may even take flight if sufficiently disturbed. Virgin queens can often be found clinging to the walls or corners of a hive during inspections.
Bombus morio
The ovaries of the queens of the "Bombus morio" can remain fully functional for a long period of the life of the queen. Some of the virgin queens maybe be isolated to induce oviposition when they reach the age of 40 days.. When the virgin queen is still in the colony with an existing queen, they will instead assume the role of a worker. Hence, for ovaries of the queens are about 25 days, the oocytes may be reabsorbed. Queens do not need to mate to produce males.
Dialictus
Communal bees live in colonies of two or more females. Most of the building, foraging, and caring for the offspring are done by worker bees. The queen bee is often the only fertilized female in the colony and lays most if not all the eggs.
Black garden ant
Although worker ants live for at least four years, queens can survive for almost 30 years. Understanding the basis for the greater longevity of queens has a bearing on the general unsolved problem in biology of the causes of aging. In the study of long-lived queen ants it was found that queens have a higher expression than genetically identical workers of genes involved in processing damaged macromolecules. Genes with higher expression included those that are necessary for repair of DNA damage (see DNA damage theory of aging) and genes involved in proteasome-mediated, ubiquitin-dependent, protein catabolic processes.
Lasioglossum sordidum
Overwinter females that have been fertilized stay in nests, coming out in late winter as the ground begins to get warmer. During the winter prepupae are in moist soils to survive the cold temperatures, in late spring and early summer new males and females begin to appear, being active during the warmer months. An individual bee is unlikely to live longer than eight weeks. Due to the lengthy time they spend nesting they forage on a wide range of flowering plants. "Lasioglossum sordidum" are described to have a eusocial life cycle this means that there is a mix of juveniles and adults. Eusociality is used by all bees as a system to raise young. There is limited social organization shown within the behaviours of the bee as they are usually solitary however females forage from one nest.
Queen (butterfly)
The queen is a moderately large butterfly. It has an average wingspan of to . It is easily distinguishable from its cousin, the monarch, by its darker brown ground color. The queen bears a closer resemblance to its other cousin, the soldier ("Danaus eresimus"). It boasts a very tough and flexible chitinous exoskeleton, unlike most other butterflies.
Queen bee
After approximately ten days, the queen cells are transferred from the cell building colony to small mating nuclei colonies, which are placed inside of mating yards. The queen cells hatch inside of the mating nuclei. After approximately 7–10 days, the virgin queens take their mating flights, mate with 10–20 drone bees, and return to their mating nuclei as mated queen bees.
Queen bee
During swarming season, the old queen is likely to leave with the prime swarm before the first virgin queen emerges from a queen cell.
Queen bee
Although the name might imply it, a queen bee does not directly control the hive. Her sole function is to serve as the reproducer. A well-mated and well-fed queen of quality stock can lay about 1,500 eggs per day during the spring build-up—more than her own body weight in eggs every day. She is continuously surrounded by worker bees who meet her every need, giving her food and disposing of her waste. The attendant workers also collect and then distribute queen mandibular pheromone, a pheromone that inhibits the workers from starting queen cells.
List of longest-living members of the British royal family
The longest-living member of the British royal family has been Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (1901–2004), who lived 102 years and 309 days. Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester became the oldest ever member of the royal family when she surpassed the age of 101 years and 238 days in 2003, the age at which Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (1900–2002) died in 2002. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother had previously set the record of being the longest-living British royal in 1998 when she surpassed the age of 97 years and 313 days, the age of Princess Alice of Albany (1883–1981) when she died in 1981. Princess Alice of Albany is also the longest-living member by blood and was the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria (1819–1901) and Albert, Prince Consort (1819–1861). The current oldest living member of the British royal family is Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born 1921), who is the fourth longest-living British royal and the longest-living male British royal. Prince Philip became the longest-serving royal consort in 2009. The United Kingdom’s current reigning monarch, Elizabeth II (born 1926), is presently the sixth longest ever living British royal family member, the longest-living British monarch, and, since September 2015, the longest ever reigning British monarch.
Vespula pensylvanica
Colonies are initiated by the queen. After emerging from the diapause when winter ends, the fertilized queen searches for a nest site. When it is located, a small nest is formed. The queen continues to forage for construction materials and food until four to seven workers have emerged. At this point, the queen focuses solely on laying eggs and the nest continues to expand. Between August and September, males and queens are produced, which then leave the nest and mate. The nest begins to decline around this time. The males eventually die, and the inseminated queen begins diapause. The inseminated queen is the only member of the colony to survive winter. Longevity of the workers varied with colony activity and development, with the lifespan of the earliest-born workers averaging 22 days and the latest-born workers averaging 40 days.
Queanbeyan Nature Reserve
Larvae feed exclusively on the roots of wallaby grasses and adult Golden Sun Moths, which do not feed, live for only one to for days. The flight period usually lasts from six to eight weeks during November and December in the Queanbeyan region, and adult moths emerge continuously throughout this period. Males Golden Sun Moths fly only in bright sunshine during the warmest part of the day
Bombus affinis
During this half-way point in the summer, any members with reproductive potential leave the nest and begin mating. The number of potential queens that can be produced is heavily reliant on the amount of nectar and pollen that can gathered during this time. Thus, a shortage of food may result in lesser queen production, and vice versa. Because solitary queens are the only members of the "B. affinis" that can initiate new colonies, the success of future colonies is dependent on queen production. Furthermore, after mating, new queens rest and enter into diapause, or hibernation for the winter. Male members and workers decline as the weather gets colder, and eventually die when winter comes. Thus, colonies live for about 4–5 months depending on the environmental conditions. Queens commonly die at different times throughout colony production, which can often lead to orphaned colonies. Queens typically live for about 77 days on average.
Beekeeping
When a colony accidentally loses its queen, it is said to be "queenless". The workers realize that the queen is absent after as little as an hour, as her pheromones fade in the hive. The colony cannot survive without a fertile queen laying eggs to renew the population, so the workers select cells containing eggs aged less than three days and enlarge these cells dramatically to form "emergency queen cells". These appear similar to large peanut-like structures about an inch long that hang from the center or side of the brood combs. The developing larva in a queen cell is fed differently from an ordinary worker-bee; in addition to the normal honey and pollen, she receives a great deal of royal jelly, a special food secreted by young "nurse bees" from the hypopharyngeal gland. This special food dramatically alters the growth and development of the larva so that, after metamorphosis and pupation, it emerges from the cell as a queen bee. The queen is the only bee in a colony which has fully developed ovaries, and she secretes a pheromone which suppresses the normal development of ovaries in all her workers.
Worker bee
Queen attendants take care of the queen by feeding and grooming her. Yet, even more important is their incidental role in spreading Queen Mandibular Pheromone (QMP) throughout the hive. This is a pheromone given off by queen. After coming into contact with the queen, the attendants spread QMP throughout the hive, which is a signal to the rest of the bees that the hive still has a viable queen.
Hercules beetle
Not much is known about the life cycle in the wild, but much evidence has been gained through observations of captive-bred populations. Females of "D. hercules" may lay up to 100 eggs on the ground or on dead wood. Once hatched, the larval stage of the Hercules beetle may last up to two years in duration, with the larva growing up to in length and weighing more than 100 g. The larvae, which are coloured yellow with a black head, undergo three instars. In laboratory conditions at 25 ± 1°C, the first stage lasts an average of 50 days, the second stage an average of 56 days, and the third an average of 450 days. The pupal stage lasts about 32 days, while adults can live for three to six months in captivity.
Queen bee
As the queen ages her pheromone output diminishes. A queen bee that becomes old, or is diseased or failing, is replaced by the workers in a procedure known as "supersedure".
Varroa jacobsoni
The lifecycle of "V. jacobsoni" in "A. cerana" begins with a mature mated female entering a larval cell of a honey bee. Once the cell is capped, the adult female mite hides for five days inside the larval food near the bottom of the cell. After about five hours, the mite is released from the food, where it then begins feeding on the host's haemolymph. After 60 hours, the adult female mite lays its first egg on the wall of the cell. Unfertilised mite eggs produce male offspring, that are able to mate with the female offspring. The adult mated female then emerges from the cell with the emerging bee. Once mites are released to the environment, they are transferred to other bees through close contact. The adult female mites then feed through the intersegmental membrane on honeybee haemolymph. The cycle is then completed.
Queen bee (sociology)
A queen bee in a school setting is sometimes referred to as a school diva or school princess. These queen bees are often stereotyped in the media as being beautiful, charismatic, manipulative, and wealthy, holding positions of high social status, such as being head cheerleader (or being the captain of some other, usually an all-girl, sports team), the Homecoming or Prom Queen (or both). The phenomenon of queen bees is common in finishing schools.
Queen snake
Female queen snakes will be fully sexually mature at three years of age, males at two years. Breeding takes place in the spring and autumn months. If mating was in the autumn, the female can delay giving birth till spring, storing the energy she will need through the months that she will be in a period of brumation. This snake is ovoviviparous, the female giving birth to live young after carrying the eggs within her body. This differs from oviparous and viviparous snakes. Litter size can vary from 5 to 20, and the time for an individual birth is from 1.5 to 2.5 minutes. Time between individual births is 4 minutes to 1 hour, with the average time being 11 minutes.
Cat
The gestation period of queens is between 64 and 67 days, with an average of 66 days.
Data on reproductive capacity of more than 2,300 free-ranging queens were collected during a study between May 1998 and October 2000. They had one to six kittens per litter, with an average of three kittens. They produced a mean of 1.4 litters per year, but a maximum of three litters in a year. Of 169 kittens, 127 died before they were six months old due to a trauma caused in most cases by dog attacks and road accidents.
The first litter is usually smaller than subsequent litters. Kittens are weaned between six and seven weeks of age. Queens normally reach sexual maturity at 5–10 months, and males at 5–7 months. This varies depending on breed.
Queen bee
The queen bee's abdomen is longer than the worker bees surrounding her and also longer than a male bee's. Even so, in a hive of 60,000 to 80,000 honey bees, it is often difficult for beekeepers to find the queen with any speed; for this reason, many queens in non-feral colonies are marked with a light daub of paint on their thorax. The paint used does no harm to the queen and makes her much easier to find when necessary.
List of British monarchy records
The longest-lived male consort is her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who is old
and is also the longest-lived male descendant of Queen Victoria.
Queen Victoria's longest-lived descendant overall was Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone (1883-1981) at 97 years, 312 days (Prince Philip would surpass her on 19 April 2019, and Queen Elizabeth II would pass her as longest-lived holder of a British royal title from birth on 28 February 2024). The longest-lived holder of a British royal title by marriage, and the oldest person in the history of the British royal family, was Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (1901-2004) at 102 years, 319 days (Prince Philip would surpass her on 15 April 2024; Queen Elizabeth II would pass her age on 24 February 2029).
Bee
Many bumblebees are eusocial, similar to the eusocial Vespidae such as hornets in that the queen initiates a nest on her own rather than by swarming. Bumblebee colonies typically have from 50 to 200 bees at peak population, which occurs in mid to late summer. Nest architecture is simple, limited by the size of the pre-existing nest cavity, and colonies rarely last more than a year. In 2011, the International Union for Conservation of Nature set up the Bumblebee Specialist Group to review the threat status of all bumblebee species worldwide using the IUCN Red List criteria.
Queen bee
Queen rearing can be practiced on a small scale by hobbyist or sideline beekeepers raising a small amount of queens for their own use, or can be practiced on a larger, commercial scale by companies that produce queen bees for sale to the public. As of 2017, the cost of a queen honeybee ranges from $25 to $32.
Queen bee
The surviving virgin queen will fly out on a sunny, warm day to a "drone congregation area" where she will mate with 12–15 drones. If the weather holds, she may return to the drone congregation area for several days until she is fully mated. Mating occurs in flight. The young queen stores up to 6 million sperm from multiple drones in her spermatheca. She will selectively release sperm for the remaining 2–7 years of her life.
Sternocera ruficornis
The female lays eggs singly in soil at the base of the host plants. Each female is capable of laying 5–12 eggs, which take 2 months to hatch. The hatched larva has five instar stages. Stages 1 to 4 remain in the soil for 3–4 months where they feed upon the roots of the adult host plants. The 5th instar can be found above ground, until it returns underground again to pupate. Adult beetles have a short lifespan of 1–3 weeks, though the complete life cycle takes up to two years.
Scaptotrigona postica
Queens are the largest bees in the nest, averaging 38–50 mg, and are identifiable by their swollen abdomens. Also, they have more of the yellow coloring than the workers and drones. There is one queen per colony, but once virgin queens are born, they are tolerated for 15 days on average until they either leave the colony or are killed. "S. postica" queens cannot independently colonize, instead needing a group of workers to help build a new colony. While virgin queen bees must leave the colony, a queen holds her position for several years
Queen bee syndrome
Queen bee syndrome was first defined by G.L. Staines, T.E. Jayaratne, and C. Tavris in 1973. It describes a woman in a position of authority who views or treats subordinates more critically if they are female. This phenomenon has been documented by several studies. In another study, scientists from the University of Toronto speculated that the queen bee syndrome may be the reason that women find it more stressful to work for women managers; no difference was found in stress levels for male workers. An alternate, though closely related, definition describes a queen bee as one who has succeeded in her career, but refuses to help other women do the same.
Beekeeping
All the time that the queen is fertile and laying eggs she produces a variety of pheromones, which control the behavior of the bees in the hive. These are commonly called "queen substance", but there are various pheromones with different functions. As the queen ages, she begins to run out of stored sperm, and her pheromones begin to fail.
Queen bee (disambiguation)
A queen bee is an insect.