The main purpose of a Queen Bee in a bee colony is not to rule and reign over the colony, but to lay lots and lots of eggs. It takes around twenty seconds to lay an egg and she can lay up to two thousand eggs a day, especially around April and May. The Queen Bee secretes a sort of bee perfume called ‘pheromone’ which tells all the other bees that she is still in the hive with them and that she is still laying eggs. If the Queen Bee dies, the bees are able to make a substitute Queen from eggs that are less than three days old.

The Queen Bee lays her eggs in different sized cells in a bee hive. The eggs which produce ‘workers’ have small cells that are around five millimetres in diameter and the eggs that produce ‘male drones’ have cells around seven millimetres in diameter. The Queen Bee also makes acorn-shaped cells which hang and point downwards. These acorn-shaped cells are for the eggs that produce Queen Bees. When the Queen Bee larvae hatch out of the eggs, young nurse bees look after them and feed the larvae on Royal Jelly which is a thick white creamy substance. After about eight days the young nurses enclose the young Queen Bees in thier cells and close each cell with a wax wall. During this time the ‘older’ Queen Bee leaves the hive with a swarm of bees known as a ‘prime swarm’ to find a new location to build a bee hive. Before the prime swarm takes place the older Queen Bee is usually starved of food to make her lighter in weight so that she is able to fly and join the swarm.

The larvae in the acorn-shaped cells develop into Queen Bees about nine days after they have been enclosed in the cell. The first young Queen Bee that leaves the cell may lead a smaller swarm called a ‘cast’ to a new location or she may go to the other Queen Bee cells and kill her ‘sisters’ by stinging them. The young Queen Bee then flies outside for a short while so that she can check her new surroundings. Eventually she lays her own eggs and after a year she too may lead her own ‘prime swarm’ to a new safe spot, just like the older Queen did.