Daily Life For The Queen
Although the name might imply it, a queen 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 2,000 eggs per day during the spring build-up — more than her own bodyweight 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.
The queen bee is able to control the sex of the eggs she lays. The queen lays a fertilized (female) or unfertilized (male) egg according to the width of the cell. Drones are raised in cells that are significantly larger than the cells used for workers. The queen fertilizes the egg by selectively releasing sperm from her spermatheca as the egg passes through her oviduct.
Read more about this topic: Queen Bee
Famous quotes containing the words daily life, daily, life and/or queen:
“Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Nothing in life possesses value except the degree of power—assuming that life itself is the will to power.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Madame d’Estampes and Madame de Valentinois make me fear that I should be only honoured by my husband as a queen and not loved by him as a woman.”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)