The first phase of swarming comes at the beginning of spring, when bees start building cells for drones. Since it takes longer for these males to grow (queens develop from egg to adult in 16 days, workers in 21 and males in 24), their combs need to be ready by early April.92 It's worth noting that the cells for the males are prepared before the queen's mandibular pheromone is entirely exhausted. That's because under normal circumstances, the workers need to prepare queen cells when the levels of this pheromone go down. Nevertheless, the worker bees start building male cells, and the drones hatch out in early May, which explains why the cells for the males are readied.

As we know, males can search for the queen two weeks after they emerge. Unless the drones can find a queen to mate with, their existence at this point will be meaningless. Therefore, the queen needs to be ready for her mating flight at this time. If the workers are late in preparing the cells for the males, either the queen will fail to mate, or the process will be delayed. Since the queen cannot start laying eggs until after she mates, this will represent a threat to the colony.

The old queen, who does possess the ability to lay eggs, leaves the hive long before the new one emerges. This situation, which may appear very confused at first glance, is resolved by the workers with perfect timing.

At the same time that the workers begin to construct new queen cells, they oblige the old queen to abandon the egg-laying process, because the time to migrate has come and necessary preparations must be made. Therefore, workers start feeding the old queen less royal jelly. The reduced level of this foodstuff slows or halts her egg-laying. But there is another reason for restricting the food given to the queen. In order for her to leave the colony with the swarm that will accompany her, it's vital that she not be too bulky.

This method employed by the workers soon bears fruit, and the queen starts to move about more quickly. Within a short time, she becomes as mobile as the other bees.93

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• 92. Mark L. Winston, The Biology of the Honey Bee, p.51
• 93. Thomas A.Sebeok, Animal Communication, p.225

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