There can bee only one

May 6, 2009 8:30 AM

BeeFilter: When a new queen hatches, my understanding is that they set about killing as many other potential queen larvae and pupae as they can, or they leave the colony and start a new one elsewhere. But if the new queen opts to remain in the existing colony, what ultimately happens to the currently reigning queen? Is she killed off too or is she allowed to go retire peacefully somewhere?
posted by Ziggy Zaga to science & nature (7 comments total)

The worker bees would probably only be feeding royal jelly to larvae if the old queen was near death or dead. IANABK (Bee Keeper)
posted by jrishel at 8:50 AM on May 6

or, of course, if the swarm is big enough to swarm... then the old queen would stay around.
posted by jrishel at 8:52 AM on May 6

scratch that, the old queen leaves, new queen stays in a swarm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_bee
posted by jrishel at 8:54 AM on May 6

Nice. I had read the Wiki on "honeybees" and some other stuff but neglected to narrow down my search to just "queen bee."

From the Wiki article:

When a new queen is available, the workers will kill the reigning queen by "balling" her — clustering tightly around her until she dies from overheating.

Thank you very much!
posted by Ziggy Zaga at 9:08 AM on May 6

There are times, however, when you can have two queens (allowed to) peacefully co-exist in the same hive. DHIABK (Dear Husband is a bee keeper) and pointed this out to me recently. It can be occur naturally and can be artificially established as well. Just google "two queen hive system" or "two queens one hive" or something similar.
posted by onhazier at 10:20 AM on May 6 [1 favorite]

Please don't google "two queens one hive". God knows what you might find.
posted by Roman Graves at 12:34 PM on May 6 [2 favorites]

LOL Actually, the links you get on "two queens one hive" do bring up a lot of beekeeping sites. I did it to be sure before I posted it as a suggestion. I giggled as I did it, too. It is a legitimate set of terms connected to beekeeping. I just phrased it to sound bad.
posted by onhazier at 1:49 PM on May 6