Workers and queens have a really complex arrangement.

Queens are fertilized by several drones in a short period of time.  They may make more than one mating flight, but don’t continue mating after that initial frolicsome time when she is young and lithe.

Once she gets situated in a hive, laying eggs, she tends to stay put.

UNLESS, the workers choose to make new queens.  They determine when new queens are produced.  And the old queen doesn’t get her feelings hurt, because in spite of the language used in beekeeping, bees are communists.  The good of the many outweighs everything else for a bee.  Even the queen.

Queens have a spermatheca, which is a very specialized organ.  It allows her to lay fertilized or unfertilized eggs  An odd part of that is that the unfertilized eggs produce males/drones.

Workers determine the size of the cells to build in a comb.  They make larger cells if they think they need to produce more drones because, apparently, boy bees need bigger rooms.  (They also take longer to develop.) So the queen knows by the size of the cell she is laying in whether to fertilize that egg or not.

All hatched eggs get royal jelly, produced by a gland in the hypopharynx of the workers, for a day.  Larvae that are going to be queens get all royal jelly all the time.  Drones and workers get switched to honey and pollen after that first day.  All that royal jelly causes the queens’ ovaries to develop into functional organs.

If the workers have decided that they need a new queen, they will have her lay fertilized eggs in queen cups and then stuff those larvae with royal jelly until they cap the cups.  And the queen cells are very obvious.  They look like peanuts hanging off the comb.  I think they even have royal jelly snacks in the queen cells with them.

Usually, if they are planning to swarm, they make queen cells on the bottom of the combs.  If they just think the old queen needs replacing, they make supercedure cells up in the main body of the combs.  So, beekeepers will talk about supercedure cells or swarm cells meaning queen cells in the indicated location.

Supercedure happens when the queen is old or weak or generally falling down on the job.

Swarming happens when there are more bees than the hive can hold.  Or they are just so full of life and there is so much good forage that they feel expansive.

When they swarm, the old queen takes a contingent of workers and goes to look for new digs, leaving the old, established hive to her daughter.

The first queen to emerge may rip open her sisters’ cells, ending competition.   Or she may wait to see if they actually hatch, then they fight to the death.  I’m not sure if the workers get involved in that decision or not.

About a week later, she makes her mating flight(s), flying about a mile from her hive.  When she is through collecting DNA, she comes back and starts laying eggs according to the plan of the workers.

Drones fly a mile and a half to drone zones where they off their DNA to any queen in search of a little booty, so queens don’t mate with their brothers.  Drone Zone would be a great name for a pickup bar.