Following her larval stage, the queen goes through the pupal phase, just like all other bees, and emerges as an adult queen 16 days after the egg phase. In size, she is rather larger than the workers, and rather longer than the male drones.

To help ensure the security of the hive, and bearing all potential circumstances in mind, the workers raise several queens at a time, not just one. In the event that any harm befalls the old queen, a new queen immediately begins to be raised. The first thing she does is to move around the combs until she finds an uncovered cell with honey in it. She eats the honey she finds and rapidly moves around the other combs. Her objective is to find and kill the other pupating, potential queens. As soon as she finds another unhatched queen, she uses her lower jaw to tear open the cell in which the queen pupa lies, and stings her rival. Alternatively, she may simply leave the cell cap open and leave the queen to be destroyed by the workers.

If the queen encounters another adult queen in the hive, the two attack each other in a fight to the death, which contest is decided when one manages to sting the other. But this is not a frequent occurrence in the hive, because queens confront one another only if the existing queen is very old or has not yet left the colony to establish a new one.47 Generally speaking, when a new queen appears in the hive, the old queen has long since departed it. That the queen is so determined to kill her rivals is of great importance in terms of the order in the hive, because the existence of only one queen in the hive is essential for the establishment of discipline.

As soon as the queen bee emerges from the cell, the first thing she does is to destroy the other queen in the hive. These photos show queens fighting to the death.

As she emerges from her cell, the new queen cannot replace the old queen, because she has not yet begun to lay eggs. In order to do so, she first needs to mate. Yet mating never takes place inside the hive. The queen soon leaves the hive and looks for male bees-drones-to fertilize her.48

There are two circumstances under which the queen leaves the hive: her mating flight and swarming time. Apart from these two occasions, the queen will never leave the hive. Before departing on the mating flight, she constantly moves around the hive. On days 5 and 6, she visits the hive entrance frequently. The following day or the day after, she leaves on short flights to learn the location of the hive and to familiarize herself with its surroundings. These flights start out with short duration, but become longer as the days go by.49

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• 47. Murray Hoyt, The World of Bees, p.48.
• 48. Edward O.Wilson, The Insect Societies, Harvard Unv. Press, Cambridge, Massachussetts, 1972.
• 49. Murray Hoyt, The World of Bees, p.49.

This article is based on the works of Harunyahya www.harunyahya.com