Queen bees: purpose, unique properties and "intimate" facts

I'm very scared of bees - we hear this phrase so often that we're slowly becoming scared of them ourselves... Just kidding, of course! On the contrary, the more we hear about people's fears of these unique creatures of the world, the more we want to "cure" them. This time we have decided to share our knowledge about queen bees. Do you know everything about them?

We start with the fact that queen bees has magical powers! You can't call it anything else, because they live for 4-5 years, while worker bees live only 30-40 days. The secret of longevity is in royal jellywhose queens in the larval stage receive much more than worker bees. So, royal jelly - the key to many years of life!

A typical colony is made up of between 20,000 and 80,000 worker bees and only one queen. Can you imagine that? A real queen bee! The queen bee never wears Honey, its job is to lay eggs. A queen bee can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day - more than she weighs!

Now that we've touched on bee reproduction, we'll share some "personal" and even "intimate" details of the lives of queen bees. They do not mate in the hive, but fly out on a "date" during which they mate with 20-45 different drones. Well, to be sure! Queen bees have a special organ to store the drones' sperm. Just one mating is enough to keep the sperm for their entire lifetime.

Did you know that queen bees helps both fertilised and unfertilised eggs. The fertilised ones hatch into worker bees and the unfertilised ones into drones. The queen bee decides how many male eggs to lay. However, drones inherit only the queen's genes, while worker bees inherit both the queen's and the drone's genes.

Drones, like queen bees, do not carry Honey. They fly around looking for unfertilised females - young queen bees. However, drones can only enjoy their carefree life in summer. In autumn, worker bees simply "escort" them out of the hive to avoid having to fatten their unnecessary mouths. Nobody wants idlers and sloths!

The worker bees bear the heaviest burden. They are the hive's "super power"! Worker bees scout and protect territories all day long, bring in honey, "sew" the wax combs, and when the queen dies, the bees don't have to grieve for long - they take the bees in hand and breed a new queen for themselves. In a hive, as in human life, there are no good or empty places!

There are 3 species of bees in Lithuania: Bakfasto, Carnic and Italian bees. Bakfast bees are the most hard-working and calm. The original Bakfast queen bees with colonies are the ideal choice for young or novice beekeepers. About You can read about the queen bees of the Bakfast variety HERE.