Daily Life For The Queen
Although the name might imply it, a queen does not directly control the hive. Her sole function is to serve as the reproducer. A well-mated and well-fed queen of quality stock can lay about 2,000 eggs per day during the spring build-up — more than her own bodyweight in eggs every day. She is continuously surrounded by worker bees who meet her every need, giving her food and disposing of her waste. The attendant workers also collect and then distribute queen mandibular pheromone, a pheromone that inhibits the workers from starting queen cells.
The queen bee is able to control the sex of the eggs she lays. The queen lays a fertilized (female) or unfertilized (male) egg according to the width of the cell. Drones are raised in cells that are significantly larger than the cells used for workers. The queen fertilizes the egg by selectively releasing sperm from her spermatheca as the egg passes through her oviduct.
Read more about this topic: Queen Bee
Famous quotes containing the words daily life, daily, life and/or queen:
“Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don’t see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.”
—Donald Sinden (b. 1923)
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But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
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Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art’s life,—and where we live, we suffer and toil.”
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““Speak when you’re spoken to!” the Queen sharply interrupted her.
“But if everybody obeyed that rule,” said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, “and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that—””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)