How does a queen bee develop?

Bees pass in 4 stages throughout their development. At the beginning, the queen bee lays an egg in each cell. Then the egg hatches into a larva. At this stage, bees are fed by workers. Later, the bee spins a cocoon around itself to become pupa. In the last stage, pupa changes to become an adult bee. Only adult bees are active. Usually, a queen bee secretes ‘queen substance’, which is a substance that targets worker bees to prevent the development of another queen. However, when the hive becomes overcrowded, the queen bee leaves the hive with almost half of the worker bees to build another hive. Once the worker bees stop receiving queen substance, they realize that they must raise a new queen. Then, they will feed a larva ‘royal jelly’ (which is a substance they release from a gland on their head) throughout its development to become a queen, while other worker bees are fed royal jelly only in the first two days of their larval stage.

In the image, you can see the queen bee in the middle surrounded by worker bees rearing her.

Wilson, T. V. How Bees Work. (n.d.) HowStuffworks, retrieved Friday July 10th 2009 from http://www.howstuffworks.com/

Image:

[Queen bee Rearing]. (n.d.) ITJungle. Retrieved Saturday July 11th 2009 from http://www.itjungle.com/.