This past summer, several of us who regularly check bees, experienced a rare sighting: A queen emerging from her cell!
She was in the process of chewing her way out when we pulled the frame with her cell on it. Another hive in the apiary needed a queen, so we quickly moved the frame with the queen into her new domain.
I have often been asked by non-beekeepers how a queen becomes a queen. When I describe the process--that the current queen lays an egg which is fed an exclusive diet of royal jelly during her larval stage--the listener always wears an astonished look. Much like royal lineage among the human species, the queen produces her own successor.
Queen bee emerging from her cell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdOuTkT57qo
Another nifty aspect of a queen’s birth is that she announces her presence through a series of sounds, what Bee Culture magazine calls “acoustic signals.” The new queen announces her arrival by piping, calling on the workers to help her escape her cell. The sounds also serve another important, although somewhat darker, purpose.
As many of us have noticed during springtime inspections, when a colony has one capped queen cell there may be several others as well. Each cell contains a developing queen. The queen that emerges first announces her arrival by tooting and releasing pheromones. The mature queens still confined in their cells answer the tooting with a piping sound of their own. The queen that is now free from her cell and roaming the hive follows the sounds to the other queen cells and eliminates the competition. This ensures that the colony will indeed have just one viable queen.
Clip of queens quacking, piping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9naKEy1v6Lw
The queen is the single most important bee in the hive. Without her, the colony would collapse. Whenever we do hive inspections, we look for evidence that she is alive and well and continuing to lay her astonishing quota of up to 2,000 eggs a day. I am always thrilled when we spot her scampering across a frame, knowing that seeing her is proof positive that the hive is thriving.
I have not yet been fortunate enough to hear the piping, tooting or quacking sounds (amplified on the clip) but at some future hive check, if we listen carefully, we may be rewarded with the queen’s chorus.
Enjoy!