Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: How long does a queen bee live?
The surviving virgin queen will fly out on a sunny, warm day to a "drone congregation area" where she will mate with 12–15 drones. If the weather holds, she may return to the drone congregation area for several days until she is fully mated. Mating occurs in flight. The young queen stores up to 6 million sperm from multiple drones in her spermatheca. She will selectively release sperm for the remaining 2–7 years of her life.[5]
Young females are responsible for constructing the nest. As adults, "Lasioglossum zephyrum" females become either mated egg-layers or workers who forage, guard, and make cells. In a typical "Lasioglossum zephyrum" colony, the oldest females tend to be mated queens. However, among similarly aged bees, the largest is generally the queen. The queen does not collect pollen or construct cells after her first batch of workers has hatched. Queens and workers are not very physically distinct, since bee size varies on a continuum.
The brown-banded carder bee is medium-sized with a relatively long tongue. The queen is long, the worker .
Queen bees may wield substantial influence and power over their cliques, and are considered role models by clique members and outsiders. Her actions are closely followed and imitated. Sussana Stern identifies the following qualities as characteristic of queen bees:Fictional portrayals of queen bees in schools include the films "Heathers" and "Mean Girls". The latter was partially adapted from the nonfiction book "Queen Bees and Wannabes". The television series "Gossip Girl" is highlighted for its portrayal of Blair Waldorf as a queen bee, as she has a league of minions for friends and is frequently referred as 'Queen B'
by her peers. Another television series "Pretty Little Liars" is also highlighted for its portrayal of Alison DiLaurentis as queen bee, as she has a clique, seems to be bossy and mean to people who are not her friends, and everyone treats her as a Queen. She is sometimes referred as 'Queen Ali'. Quinn Fabray from "Glee" is also described as "queen bee" due to her being rich, popular, beautiful and head cheerleader.
Larger bees are able to better conserve heat at low temperatures than smaller bees. This is because surface area increases at a smaller rate than volume, thus larger bees with more volume are able to conserve metabolically generated heat. "B. frigidus" bees are one of the larger types of bumblebees, with an estimated dry mass of .2571 grams and volume of 40.3 mm^3 for the queens. Worker bees have an estimated mass of .1296 grams and volume of 27.9 mm^3. The average thoracic temperature for both queens and workers is 36.2 degrees C. This allows them to survive at temperatures and altitudes that would kill smaller bees. The larger size does have a drawback: increasing size leads to the need for greater thoracic temperatures to initiate flight. In other words, there is an upper limit to how large the bees should become. If the bee is too large, it won’t be able to reach the necessary internal temperature to fly, which would leave it vulnerable to predators and unable to procure nutrition. Therefore, it would die and not pass on its genes, and natural selection would thus prevent these larger bees from being propagated.
This bee is a very important part of pollination. For many species of plant, such as species of "Viscaria", only bees and butterflies have proboscides long enough to pollinate effectively. For example, studies show "B. lapidarius" was more numerous and had a higher feeding density than other species studied. Further, "Bombus lapidarius" is important in pollinating many other species, including "Centaurea scabiosa". A study found that though "Apis mellifera" was also involved in pollination of this species, "B. lapidarius" greatly outnumbers "Apis" and other bee species in number and importance in pollination. Though initially attracted to flowers by the color, the scent is what drives attention as the bees approach flowers. it has been suggested that some individuals are better able to interpret differences in scent in the flowers than others. It has been suggested that these differences in ability developed evolutionarily as different types of bees developed specific roles within the colony. How long a bee stays at a particular flower seems to be connected to behavior, as it appeared the bees assumed low pollen reward, despite increased pollen levels in experiments. However, the amount of pollen transferred in a visit from "B. lapidarius" was only affected by the amount of pollen in the flower that individual was at. Further, it appeared that variation in duration of visits to different flowers was related to differences in foraging speed, not differences in how well the bee was able to remove nectar. 
Bees will typically forage in patches, but show no clear directionality in their foraging. Further, pollinating bees will usually visit the nearest neighboring plants, thus gene flow between plants tends to be pretty limited. 
Other experiments also indicated that body size is an important factor in how bumblebees pollinate. It would appear that size affects how often the bee will visit flowers as well as how well the bee could pollinate. Smaller bees seem to pollinate more effectively than larger bees. Yet, there did not appear to be a correlation between floral display size and body size. Therefore, it was suggested that bumblebees of all different sizes respond in the same way to floral display size.
A honey bee named Barry B. Benson stars on a new show known as "New Hive Tonight". On the show, Barry talks about how he changed the lives of honey bees and humans, bringing them together.
On his graduation day from BU university (which is the only university in the entire hive, and also maybe a spoof of Boston University, having the same abbreviation), Barry and his best friend Adam Flayman head to a honey factory called "Honex", where they are to work for the rest of their lives. Adam enjoys working, but Barry does not, thinking that everything they do in Honex is making honey, and longs to do something else in the remaining stage of his life. The game focuses on Barry's various job skills which are not in the movie such as car racing, Taxi, playing video arcade games, delivering food to owners, car fixing and doing Honex jobs while not in a mission.
Although the name might imply it, a queen bee does not directly control the hive. Her sole function is to serve as the reproducer. A well-mated and well-fed queen of quality stock can lay about 1,500 eggs per day during the spring build-up—more than her own body weight in eggs every day. She is continuously surrounded by worker bees who meet her every need, giving her food and disposing of her waste. The attendant workers also collect and then distribute queen mandibular pheromone, a pheromone that inhibits the workers from starting queen cells.[7]
In most common bee species, worker bees are infertile due to enforced altruistic kin selection, and thus never reproduce. Workers are nevertheless considered female for anatomical and genetic reasons. Genetically, a worker bee does not differ from a queen bee and can even become a laying worker bee, but in most species will produce only male (drone) offspring. Whether a larva becomes a worker or a queen depends on the kind of food it is given after the first three days of its larval form.
The American Honey Queen Program is a national competition program sponsored by the American Beekeeping Federation (ABF), with its main priorities being the promotion of the world of beekeeping, to increase the national honey consumption, and educate the public about the value of honey bees. The American Beekeeping Federation is a national organization that supports the interests of all beekeepers and individuals associated with the beekeeping industry in the United States. A Honey Queen and Princess are crowned each year, serving as representatives and salespersons of both the beekeeping and honey industries in the U.S. The Honey Queen and Princess aim to educate the public spreading their experience and knowledge of the beekeeping and honey industry, focusing on issues such as how the U.S. agriculture depends on a healthy honey bee population as far as the pollination of the nation’s crops. The Honey Queen and Princess also educate the public on the benefits of honey —how honey is a healthy substitute for sugar, how it extends the shelf life of baked products, and how it adds a unique quality such as flavor or texture to other products.
Many allodapine species exhibit very simple forms of social organization, without clear queen or worker castes. For this reason it was long thought that they had only recently evolved forms of social living. However, molecular phylogenetic studies show that social living is ancestral for the tribe as a whole and has been in place for about 50 million years. An ancient origin of sociality in this group helps explain very sophisticated forms of social communication in some species, such as pheromonal regulation of reproduction and complex forms of kin recognition. The origin of queen and workers castes in allodapine bees is relatively recent, much less than 40 million years ago, compared with the honeybees, bumble bees and stingless bees, where true queen and worker castes evolved about 100 million years ago.
New Zealand had 2,602 beekeepers at the end of 2007, who owned 313,399 hives. Total honey production was 9700 tonnes. Pollen, beeswax, and propolis are also produced. Beekeepers provide pollination services to horticulturalists, which generates more income than the products of bee culture. Approximately 20–25,000 queen bees, and 20 tonnes of packaged bees (which include worker bees and a queen) are exported live each year.
The term "queen bee" is typically used to refer to an adult, mated female (gyne) that lives in a honey bee colony or hive; she is usually the mother of most, if not all, of the bees in the beehive.[1] Queens developed from larvae selected by worker bees and specially fed in order to become sexually mature. There is normally only one adult, mated queen in a hive, in which case the bees will usually follow and fiercely protect her.
"Bombus frigidus" is predominantly parasitized by mites of the genus "Pneumolaelaps" including: "longanalis", "richardsi", and "sinahi". The mites are predominantly found on honey pots or in pollen cylinders. When the mites are on the bees themselves, they are found
mostly on queen and male bees but not on worker bees. This can be explained by the fact that only the queen bees (and the mites attached to them) have a chance to live until the next spring. Male bees commonly enter the nests of their own and other species, giving the mites the chance to spread to another colony or to another queen.
Queen Bees and Wannabes is a 2002 self-help book by Rosalind Wiseman. It focuses on the ways in which girls in high schools form cliques, and on patterns of aggressive teen girl behavior and how to deal with them. The book was, in large part, the basis for the film "Mean Girls" (2004).
Bumble bees are generally host to a diversity of parasitoids in which the larvae grow inside the living host. The majority of parasitoids for bumble bees are flies and about 30 percent or more bees within the area can be infected. The process of parasitism consists of the fly attaching to the bee in flight and inserting her oviposits between the terga of the bee. The larval fly hatches within the bee host and develops by feeding on the host’s tissues. The bee lives for about two weeks before dying. The fly then pupates and spends the winter inside the bee, fully developed, before it emerges the following year. "Bombus pensylvanicus" is host to one "cuckoo" bumble bee species, "B. variabilis". Hibernating queen bumble bees are parasitized by a nematode worm, "Sphaerularia bombi". This parasite does not reduce life span, but instead causes the sterilization of the queen. It has been observed that affected queens forage two to three weeks later than those that are unaffected. Parasitic microorganisms also use bees as their host. Parasitic microorganisms’ effects may be lethal or sublethal. Pathogens may be transmitted within a colony or the bee may be infected at flowers. Tracheal mites ("Locustacarus buchneri") leads to reduced foraging efficiency by living in the bee’s alveoli. Certain protozoans and fungi consume the host tissue or gut substances of the bumble bee’s digestive tract, decreasing foraging efficiency, life span, and thus the colony fitness. Bees may contain symbiotic bacteria that offer some immunity to pathogens. Further exposure to habitat loss as well as pesticide exposure may lead to bee predisposition, thus promoting the species’ decay.
Worker bees create "queen cups" throughout the year. When the hive is getting ready to swarm, the queen lays eggs into the queen cups. New queens are raised and the hive may swarm as soon as the queen cells are capped and before the new virgin queens emerge from their queen cells. A laying queen is too heavy to fly long distances. Therefore, the workers will stop feeding her before the anticipated swarm date and the queen will stop laying eggs. Swarming creates an interruption in the brood cycle of the original colony.
During the swarm preparation, scout bees will simply find a nearby location for the swarm to cluster. When a honey bee swarm emerges from a hive they do not fly far at first. They may gather in a tree or on a branch only a few metres from the hive. There, they cluster about the queen and send 20 - 50 scout bees out to find suitable new nest locations.
This intermediate stop is not for permanent habitation and they will normally leave within a few hours to a suitable location. It is from this temporary location that the cluster will determine the final nest site based on the level of excitement of the dances of the scout bees. It is unusual if a swarm clusters for more than three days at an intermediate stop.
Black Queen Cell Virus was originally described in 1977, but its genome was not sequenced until 2000. BQCV can currently be found most commonly in Australia and parts of South Africa. BQCV visibly affects the pupae of queen bees, causing them first to turn yellow and then black, and eventually die. These pupae come from queen bees that seem healthy and show no symptoms of being infected with this virus, as it only manifests itself with visible symptoms in the larvae. Although only the larvae are visibly affected by this disease, adults can also be infected, but asymptomatically. Transmission occurs by a parasite called "Nosema apis", which lives in the intestines of honey bees. BQCV can also be transmitted from nurse bees to larvae when they feed, and from hive to hive when the bees travel between them and when infected queen bees are distributed to other hives, There are no vaccines or treatment forms available to treat bees infected with this virus, therefore sanitation is the best way to prevent the spread. Sanitation practices include replacing the comb of the hive and requeening. Requeening simply means that the queen of the hive is replaced with a new, and in the case of infected hives, healthy queen.
Queen mandibular pheromone (QMP), emitted by the queen, is one of the most important sets of pheromones in the bee hive. It affects social behavior, maintenance of the hive, swarming, mating behavior, and inhibition of ovary development in worker bees. The effects can be short and/or long term. Some of the chemicals found in QMP are carboxylic acids and aromatic compounds. The following compounds have been shown to be important in retinue attraction of workers to their queen and other effects.
This bee lives in underground nests, preferably in or around wooden areas and gardens. Nests can be anywhere from 6 inches to a foot below the surface. Tunnels traveling to the nest range from 9 inches to 4 feet long. "B. bimaculatus" can also nest above ground or in cavities. Bees do not build nests and instead rely on finding abandoned rodent dens, hollow logs, suitable man-made structures, or tussocks. Queens will hibernate in loose dirt or rotting logs.
The term "queen bee" can be more generally applied to any dominant reproductive female in a colony of a eusocial bee species other than honey bees. However, as in the Brazilian stingless bee Schwarziana quadripunctata, a single nest may have multiple queens or even dwarf queens, ready to replace a dominant queen in a case of sudden death.[2]
In colonies that exhibit eusocial behavior, meaning there are 2-7 bees rather than the solitary foundress, the other worker bees are usually directly related to the queen. Worker bees can be mated or unmated in the colony and are smaller than the queen bee in size. Even when the foundress rears female offspring, she can still exhibit solitary behavior if the other bees leave to establish their own colonies. Since the foundress has to create an environment for her own nest, all bees of the species experience foraging behavior at some point. Observations have shown that if the queen bee is removed from a social colony, there is a replacement bee that will experience an enlargement of its ovaries, which then exerts its dominance to take over the queen's spot. The replacement bee is usually a female offspring of the queen bee. This replacement bee is capable of being just as successful in reproducing as the original queen, showing that colony status is determined by social competition and is not predetermined. In addition, it is possible that the queen bee can suppress the environment of the daughters in its colony to ensure that they are sterile and are not competition while she is still able to reproduce.
Acute bee paralysis virus is considered to be a common infective agent of bees. It belongs to the family Dicistroviridae, as does the Israel acute paralysis virus, Kashmir bee virus, and the black queen cell virus. It is frequently detected in apparently healthy colonies. Apparently, this virus plays a role in cases of sudden collapse of honey bee colonies infested with the parasitic mite "Varroa destructor".
Queens and workers have a modified ovipositor, a stinger, with which they defend the hive. Unlike bees of any other genus and the queens of their own species, the stinger of worker honey bees is barbed. Contrary to popular belief, a bee does not always die soon after stinging; this misconception is based on the fact that a bee will usually die after stinging a human or other mammal. The stinger and its venom sac, with musculature and a ganglion allowing them to continue delivering venom after they are detached, are designed to pull free of the body when they lodge. This apparatus (including barbs on the stinger) is thought to have evolved in response to predation by vertebrates, since the barbs do not function (and the stinger apparatus does not detach) unless the stinger is embedded in elastic material. The barbs do not always "catch", so a bee may occasionally pull its stinger free and fly off unharmed (or sting again).
The queen bee's abdomen is longer than the worker bees surrounding her and also longer than a male bee's. Even so, in a hive of 60,000 to 80,000 honey bees, it is often difficult for beekeepers to find the queen with any speed; for this reason, many queens in non-feral colonies are marked with a light daub of paint on their thorax.[8] The paint used does no harm to the queen and makes her much easier to find when necessary.