The queen bee

The queen bee is the largest of all the bees in the hive. Her stomach is especially large because the many eggs she lays each day are stored there. Like the workers, she has a stinger. All day long, as the queen lays her eggs, there are worker bees attending her. They clean her and feed her, because she does not leave the hive to find her own food. The worker bees even chew her food for her, because she must have so much food to make eggs that she needs help to digest it.

As the queen lays her eggs in cell after cell, the workers follow her to make sure that the eggs are safe and warm. In each cell they place food so that when the egg hatches, the baby bee will have something to eat. Then they close the cell with wax, and let the egg lie there until it hatches. After a while, out comes something that looks like a worm. This is called the larva. The larva eats all it can and falls asleep in a sort of shell that has grown around its body. While it sleeps, it grows. And while it grows, it changes.

At last when it awakens, its warm robe falls off, and there is a beautiful young bee. Some eggs hatch into worker bees; some hatch into drones; and some hatch into queen bees. The eggs that are going to hatch into queens are placed in larger cells. Worker eggs are put inside, and a special kind of food called "royal jelly" is spread around the inside of the cells. It is this royal jelly that makes the worker egg grow into a queen bee. When the first young queen steps out of her cell, she looks for any queen eggs that haven't been hatched. If she finds any, she kills them, so that she will be the only queen in the hive. But the old queen is still there. Sometimes the young queen kills her. Sometimes they live together in peace for a while. But that cannot last long, for the hive would become crowded with two mothers and all their children. The old queen finally leaves, and her loyal followers go with her.