How Does One Queen Bee Manager 80,000 Bees?
- The Editors at Very Cool Facts
- Sep 11
- 2 min read
Welcome to the Hive
Lighter than a paperclip, a honey bee charts her course by sunlight, sculpts wax into tidy little apartments, and sustains the harvests we depend on. What secret keeps this fragile architect thriving?
Welcome to the hive, a city run on rhythm and sunlight.
The Price of Honey
A healthy hive can hold between 20,000 and 80,000 bees, reaching its busiest in spring and summer.
About 85 to 95% are energetic females who scrub cells, tend the nursery, gather nectar, shape honeycomb, guard the entrance, and fan the hive. Phew!
One queen rules it all. Her hive can make around 90 pounds of honey in a good season. The bees keep most of it for the winter, and the remaining 30 to 60 pounds are harvested by beekeepers.
Gentlemen of the Hive
Only about 5-15% of a hive are drones, the colony’s males. Their single mission is to mate with a queen from another hive, keeping bee families strong and diverse.
When they are not loitering in sunny congregations, they lounge inside and let the workers feed them. Those that mate die soon after, while the rest drift through summer until autumn, when workers boot them out to save winter honey.
How the Queen Keeps Her Throne
The queen rules the hive through scent. Her pheromones guide thousands of workers to clean, feed, shape new honeycomb, and decide whether to nurture or remove a rival.
Soon after emerging from her cell, the queen takes one to three mating flights and stores enough sperm to fertilize eggs for the rest of her life. She can reign over the hive for two or three seasons, and at her peak lays as many as 2,000 eggs a day.
How Bees Share Directions
When a forager finds good nectar or pollen, she returns and performs a waggle dance for her nestmates.
The angle of her walk inside the figure eight points to the food in relation to the sun, and the length of that walk shows how far away it is.
The next time you spot a honeybee hovering over a flower, picture the hive behind that quiet buzz and let this thought delight you: nearly a third of our food begins with pollinators like them.
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