Queens
Queen bees are raised when the colony splits through swarming, or when the previous queen has died or is replaced due to old age (pheromone deficiency); the latter is called replacement.
Development occurs, as does that of worker bees, from fertilized eggs. The young queens are initially ordinary sisters of the worker bees and are up to 75% related to them.
In contrast to worker larvae, queens are fed royal jelly, a food produced by nurse bees in special glands in their heads, throughout their larval stage. They are raised in their own vertically (rather than horizontally) aligned queen cells. These are created by the hive bees either on the honeycomb through reconstruction (replenishment cells) or specifically attached to the lower edges of the honeycomb (swarm cells). The decision to produce new queens is made by the worker bees when the concentration of certain pheromones falls below a certain threshold. This process usually occurs when the colony is growing rapidly or when the queen is defective.
From an evolutionary perspective, this behavior is explained by the fact that raising a new queen is the only way for the (infertile) workers to pass their own gene pool on to the next generation. This also explains the empirically observed altruism of workers.
Mating and lifespan
Young queens, at one to two weeks old, fly out once or several times to mate with up to 12 drones. During these mating flights at so-called drone gathering sites, they collect the drones' sperm in their seminal sacs. This is sufficient for a lifespan of up to four years. When the sperm supply runs out, the queen lays a larger number of unfertilized eggs, from which drones develop. During the growing season, when fresh brood is available, such a queen is replaced by the colony.
During the nuptial flight, the queen mates with several drones from different colonies. Because she thus receives mixed sperm, her diploid offspring, the workers of a colony, split into different lineages, called fractions. This means that the workers of different fractions are not 75% related to each other and therefore exhibit slightly different behavioral traits, which gives the colony a higher fitness than would be possible if the queen mated with only a single drone. Thus, certain fractions can respond better to conditions than others, depending on which behavioral genes they possess.
Egg production
The strength of a bee colony fluctuates throughout the year. For bees in temperate climates, it is at its minimum in early spring and reaches its maximum around the summer solstice. For the large-numbered western honey bee breeds, such as the Buckfast bee, this can reach 50,000 individuals. Following a winter break, the queen begins laying eggs when temperatures reach 10 degrees Celsius or higher for three consecutive days, usually around mid- to late February (Northern Hemisphere), reaching peak levels of up to 2,000 eggs a day—more than her own body weight—around the end of May.
Pheromone source
In addition to her primary function of laying eggs during the growing season, the queen secretes the so-called queen substance through her mandibles. This contains a pheromone that inhibits the sexual activity of the other females, the worker bees, and ensures the well-being of the entire insect colony.
For example, the absence of these pheromones quickly alerts bees that their queen has died or been lost due to a beekeeping intervention. If this happens at a time when brood is present, the bees begin converting some brood cells from young worker larvae into queen cells and, using the different diet, raise new queens as replacements ("reproduction").
Text source: Wikipedia