# What happens to a mated queen.



## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Welcome to Beesource!

Mated honey bee queens pretty much do _nothing_ other than lay eggs. Queens do not forage, they are fed by workers. Queens do not even leave the hive to defecate - other bees handle 'waste disposal'. 

The normal sequence of events is that an unmated queen always has a retinue of worker bees around her (except on the mating flight(s) themselves). Workers are needed to build comb for a new hive, prepare the cells for the queen to lay in, feed the the brood, cap the brood, etc. Queens eat lots of royal jelly, which is produced by glands on the bodies of nurse bees, so nothing can be accomplished without enough workers to perform all those tasks.

More here: https://agdev.anr.udel.edu/maarec/honey-bee-biology/

Some kinds of other bees (not honey bees) do 'start from scratch' with just a queen bee overwintering (workers do not survive the winter). For instance, _bumble bees_ are like that: https://bumblebeeconservation.org/about-bees/lifecycle/

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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

Rader Sidetrack said:


> The normal sequence of events is that an unmated queen always has a retinue of worker bees around her (except on the mating flight(s)


OR when you're looking for her!


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Fact of life...You always find the queen in the last place you look.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Rader Sidetrack said:


> The normal sequence of events is that an unmated queen always has a retinue of worker bees around her


They do?


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Michael Palmer said:


> Fact of life...You always find the queen in the last place you look.


Only if you dont keep looking, hoping to find the second queen that is in there....


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

>> The normal sequence of events is that an unmated queen always has a retinue of worker bees around her



Michael Palmer said:


> They do?


Well, you truncated my statement. But aside from that, there are workers with virgin queens as those virgins emerge, there are workers with any swarms headed up by virgin queens, and there are workers in any hive where those queens may end up. Honey bee queens, generally, are always around workers, with the exception of mating flights, which I mentioned.

Perhaps my use of "retinue" might not have been the best word choice, but I was trying to communicate that honey bee queens are almost always with a group of other honey bees (workers). Honey bee queens don't go flying around (solitary) looking for a hive to move into. Consider my answer in the context of the OP.

That all is in contrast to bumble bee queens, which do indeed spend a significant period of time in solitary. And I mentioned that in that post that you quoted.


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

Michael Palmer said:


> Fact of life...You always find the queen in the last place you look.


That's very true no matter because when you find her, you stop looking! Thus, it's the last place!


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Rader Sidetrack said:


> Perhaps my use of "retinue" might not have been the best word choice,


That's what it was. I find virgins running around in mating nucs when we're catching mated queens. They never have a retinue...as in the circle of bees around a mated queen. Virgins are usually running here and running there and never stop long enough for a retinue to form. But they are, of course, accompanied by bees.


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## greg30808 (Apr 9, 2017)

Thank you all for all your good information. 
My question is a bit out of the ordinary since it refers to what happens outside of beekeeping.
I was wondering what happens when a queen comes down from her mating flight. Where does she go to find workers to help her?
I apologize if my question was answered above and I just didn't recognize it.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Virgin honey bee queens always have a colony of bees to return to, so when a queen has completed her mating flight she already knows where to find that colony.

There are only three scenarios where a queen honey bee is on a mating flight: supersedure, primary swarm, or afterswarm. With a supersedure, the established colony raises a queen, she mates, and returns to that colony. With a primary swarm, the established (old) queen leaves the (old) parent hive with the 'first' group of swarm bees and together they establish a _new_ colony, which means the virgin queen has that same established (old) hive to go to after her mating flight.

With an afterswarm, *_which is not a guaranteed event_*, the afterswarm (which includes a virgin queen) leaves the established hive *after* the primary swarm, finds a (new) home, and then that virgin queen goes on a mating flight. She returns to the swarm's (new) home. There may be more than one afterswarm, but the procedure is the same for each afterswarm.


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## dudelt (Mar 18, 2013)

Which basically means she comes back to the hive that she came from. Generally, the reason you have an unmated queen needing to go on a mating flight is because the old queen left with a swarm leaving the virgin queen and about 1/2 of the workers in the original hive, the old queen died, the old queen is failing and being replaced.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Welcome to Bee Source, greg30808!

Unlike the queen ant, a virgin queen bee cannot simply fly to a tree cavity to lay her first egg to start a new bee colony. You see in a normal hive, there are lots of workers to help the queen bee. We usually bought the package or a nuc with a mated queen already. That is why we never get to see the queen on her mating flight. Now with a split hive, it is a different story. The queen less split hive will make some queen cells that will turn into virgin queens after 16 days give or take. This virgin will harden herself up after emergence from the QC after a week or 2. Since it is a split hive there are worker bees with the QCs (later a virgin queen) in the hive already. <<== This is the answer you are looking for. On a split hive we will never take all the workers away so that they can take care of the virgin queen later on. This virgin will take a few days to take her baby step orientation flights around the hive environment. After she got used to her outside hive environment a bit she will take her multiple real mating flights. This time farther away. Like the worker bees, she will need to orient to the hive location first just like when you come back from school you know where is your house located exactly. Now with worker bees in the hive waiting for her after her mating flights, there will always be bees there to take good care of her when she started laying assuming everything goes well. So where does she go to find workers to help her? A: We are the one who put in the worker bees on a split hive waiting for the QCs to emerge. Oh, don't ask me which comes first the chicken or the egg. Then it goes back to the question of is it creation or evolution. Just imagine one day someone find the bees inside a tree cavity while taking a stroll through the woods and decided to domesticate them leading to our present day beekeeping. To understand more do a search on the honey queen bee life cycle and how to make a split hive. Is this clear enough?


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## greg30808 (Apr 9, 2017)

Thank You All! Now I understand. I really appreciate the details.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

The way I understand it an unmated queen fends for herself but a mated one is served and never feeds herself. An untended mated queen is doomed. 

Now that we have that settled which came first? The egg, the queen, the drone, the worker, or the colony?


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

Rader Sidetrack said:


> Virgin honey bee queens always have a colony of bees to return to, so when a queen has completed her mating flight she already knows where to find that colony.
> 
> There are only three scenarios where a queen honey bee is on a mating flight: supersedure, primary swarm, or afterswarm. With a supersedure, the established colony raises a queen, she mates, and returns to that colony. With a primary swarm, the established (old) queen leaves the (old) parent hive with the 'first' group of swarm bees and together they establish a _new_ colony, which means the virgin queen has that same established (old) hive to go to after her mating flight.
> 
> With an afterswarm, *_which is not a guaranteed event_*, the afterswarm (which includes a virgin queen) leaves the established hive *after* the primary swarm, finds a (new) home, and then that virgin queen goes on a mating flight. She returns to the swarm's (new) home. There may be more than one afterswarm, but the procedure is the same for each afterswarm.


Occasionally a virgin queen also leaves with the prime swarm along with the old queen. That virgin may get killed by the old queen, may get mated after the swarm and kills the old queen or may get mated after the swarm and leave the new colony in a swarm of her own. I have had such a swarm issue almost three weeks after hiving a swarm on foundation. That is too fast for the swarm to have produced a new queen and had her mate and ready to lay eggs. With bees if you think you know all the tricks they can pull just wait. They will show you another trick.

A caged laying queen is generally dead in under 24 hours without any attendant bees to feed her even if honey and water are available to her. At least that is the result I have gotten every time I tried it as an experiment.


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## RBRamsey (Mar 1, 2015)

Richard Cryberg said:


> A caged laying queen is generally dead in under 24 hours without any attendant bees to feed her even if honey and water are available to her. At least that is the result I have gotten every time I tried it as an experiment.



I kept a queen in the incubator alive for over 3 weeks by feeding her honey and water. She will eat it. She was a queen that I replaced in the hive. She was kept in a 3 hole Benton cage by herself. Maybe the temperature/humidity played a factor?


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Ramsey, keeping a virgin that long in the incubator will cause rejection by the hive. I've read that by 21 days her window of
opportunity had expired. How do you introduce her into the hive after the 3 weeks? What method did you use?


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## j.kuder (Dec 5, 2010)

let me simplify the answer for ya. under normal circumstances she goes back to the colony she came from


greg30808 said:


> I have read that a mated queen will die without workers to take care of her.
> What happens in nature after a queen mates? Can she start a new hive or does she need to find a queenless hive to join?
> 
> Thanks


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## DanielD (Jul 21, 2012)

No honeybee lives solo. They need to be part of a colony to survive.


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