When the Queen Ages
As the queen bee grows older, her strength declines, and the consequences begin to be seen in the hive. The rate of her egg-laying slows down, for instance, and most important of all, there is a drop in the quantity of the substance she secretes. As we have seen, the odor of this substance prevents the workers from raising a new queen, so such indications are a sign for the worker bees. As its level reduces, the workers immediately begin to construct new royal cells and set about raising new queens.
Under normal circumstances, it is out of the question for a bee colony to suddenly find itself without a queen. That's because when circumstances suddenly change and the colony finds itself facing the danger of having no queen, the worker bees immediately start feeding some of the existing larvae with royal jelly. 64
There is another important point here. As already noted, the cells for those larvae raised as queens are generally wider than the others. Under emergency circumstances, there is no possibility of the larvae to be raised as queens being transferred to larger queen cells. Their cells are of the standard worker size, which might pose a problem for the developing queens. Yet for the bees, it represents no difficulty.
In such an emergency, the workers start to tear down the walls of cells around those of the larvae being raised as queens. Their aim is to widen the regular cells and enlarge them into royal cells. Several worker cells are torn down for any single royal cell. The worker larvae inside them die, of course.65
Yet this loss is insignificant for the hive. The workers do this in order to ensure the survival of their colony as a whole. They prefer the survival of a few candidate queens to that of several workers. Following the preparation of the queen cells in this manner, the new potential queens are fed with royal jelly.
Shortly afterwards, the first of the specially reared queens emerges from her cell and sets about eliminating her rivals.
From the moment she emerges from the cell until leaving the hive, the queen is fully aware of what she needs to do. There is only one possible explanation for her conscious and goal-oriented behavior and the way in which she's fully equipped with everything she needs to achieve that end. Bees possess a consciousness inspired in them by God, and engage in this behavior by His will.
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This article is based on the works of Harunyahya www.harunyahya.com