New Hobby: Bee Keeping

[massphatness]

Originally Posted by bonjing

What happens to the queen if you didn't find her? Would she not find her way back into the hive?

Kinda' unknown -- she wasn't buzzing around. She was literally walking across the ground in front of the hive. She can fly, so maybe she would have just flown back in the hive.

Under different circumstances, it the hive was more established, it wouldn't be a big deal. Queens die; life happens. When she goes, the worker bees simply create a new queen. But they need an egg that the previous queen laid, and the egg has to be a certain age. With my hive, I don't know if there would have been proper eggs from which to choose.

All eggs start with the potential to be queens:

* If the queen doesn't fertilize an egg, it will develop into a drone (male) bee. All queens are female.

* In the beginning all eggs are fed this goop called royal jelly -- it's produced by the bees from special glands in their head. After 3 days, the workers switch to feeding the eggs a honey mixture EXCEPT if they're making a queen. Fertilized eggs destined for the throne are fed ONLY royal jelly. Eggs weened off the royal jelly develop into regular female worker bees.