While a queen honeybee might mate with ten to twenty males, queen stingless bees normally only mate with one male.
A queen mates during the first 1-2 weeks of her adult life. She can take multiple mating flights and mated with several males – on average 12-15. Increasing the genetic diversity of the colony is important for colony productivity and disease resistance.
A male drone will mount the queen and insert his endophallus, ejaculating semen. After ejaculation, a male honey bee pulls away from the queen, though his endophallus is ripped from his body, remaining attached to the newly fertilized queen.
Queen honeybees not only mate with lots of males, but they also brag about it to the whole hive.
Honeybee queens are efficient sperm storers that initially store around 6 million sperm for up to 7 years, giving them an estimated potential to sire up to 1.7 million offspring (see [29] for a review on the honeybee mating system).
Queens Only Have Sex Once in their Life
A queen mates only once in her life and stores the sperm she collects in a special organ which she draws from to lay eggs for the rest of her life. Queens mate in the air with as many drones as possible.
Older worker bees will reject queens that they are not familiar with and tend to view them as a colony invader, even when they have no hope of raising a new queen on their own. This is especially true if the queen is unmated, or not well-mated, with numerous drones from unrelated colonies.
Once the hive is finally destroyed, a queen bee will spawn up above and slowly float down towards you. Quickly activate your bug repellent, get in close to the queen bee, and feed her the rare flowers so that she becomes tamed.
A virgin queen bee will never mate inside of her own hive as she needs to take flight to mate. By mating during flight, a queen bee is able to increase the odds that she will mate with drones that did not originate from her own colony, and thereby minimize the chances of inbreeding appearing in the next generation.
Drones don't necessarily mate with their own queen, but instead, they gather outside the hive with other drones from neighboring colonies. It's like a mating meeting place. Drones collect in mating swarms up to a mile away from the hive. They swarm about 200 to 300 feet in the air.
Conventional wisdom is that:- once mated, a queen will not fly other than with a swarm, but there are a few exceptions of mated queens flying that mainly go un-noticed.
During mating, the male honey bee (drone) inserts his endophallus into the queen. After mating successfully, the drone attempts to fly away, but the endophallus remains in the queen, such that the lower half of his abdomen will be ripped and he will die.
Once she has mated, she flies back to the hive to assume her royal role...and beekeepers now call her a mated queen. It will take her a few days to start laying eggs, during which her abdomen grows larger, making flight clumsy and difficult. She will now stay exclusively inside the hive.
A colony of honeybees only has one queen. If there is more than one, they will fight to the death. The queen is the only bee in the hive that can lay eggs and is the mother of all the other bees.
Mating of virgin queens
A virgin queen will take one or more orientation flights to mark the location of the hive a few days after she emerges from the cell. Mating takes place when virgins are sexually mature — at 5 to 6 days of age after emergence.
By having two prolific queens laying simultaneously, the total colony population can reach over 100,000 bees, while the population of a single-queen colony generally tops out around 60,000 bees. This can lead to enormous forces of foragers capable of producing large honey crops when nectar is available.
If a queen bee is killed the worker bees try to raise a new queen by feeding select larvae royal jelly. The first queen to emerge eliminates rivals and mates with drones to continue the colony. If a new queen cannot be raised, the colony will eventually decline in population and die out.
Nurse bees will select 10 to 20 newly hatched female larvae and begin feeding them a strict diet of royal jelly, a milky white substance that be bees secrete from the tops of their heads. The exclusive diet of royal jelly turns on the female larva's reproductive system, turning her into a queen.
Most beekeepers know that a hive with a queen is likely to kill a new queen if she is introduced. Therefore, if the hive has a queen do not just drop in a new replacement.
If the queen is producing hungry, lazy, sterile males, then killing her allows one of her daughters to become a new queen, producing genuinely reproductive male heirs. The workers can then help the new queen perpetuate their collective genetic legacy.
Queen honey bees live on average 1–2 years whereas workers live on average 15–38 days in the summer and 150–200 days in the winter.