Honey bee- the queen`s role.

The queen bee presides over a colony of about 50,000 sterile females, known as workers, and 300 males known as drones. The functions of the queen are to lay eggs and maintain cohesion among the other members of the colony. She mates several times, and stores sperm in her body for the rest of her life. She uses it to fertilise most of her eggs, which will develop into either workers or queens. If she lays unfertilised eggs they will develop into drones. The worker bees decide whether fertilised eggs become workers or queens by controlling the food they give to the larvae. If a larvae is fed nothing but royal jelly, a protein secretion from the workers mouths, it will become a queen. But while the reigning queen is active she gives off a substance which inhibits the workers from producing more queens. The queen can live for up to five years. Drones exist simply to mate with a queen, and several from different colonies assemble on fine days to attract virgin queens. When the mated queen returns to the hive from her nuptial flight the drones are denied access and left defenceless to die. Most honey bee`s in Britain live in man made hives, but colonies are quite able to flourish in trees or old buildings. From October to April the hibernating bees steadily eat their store of winter food, moving up through the combs as a cluster. As the queen`s life draws to an end, she leaves the hive in May in a swarm, or dies in the hive.