Watch How A Honey Bee Queen Lays Her Eggs
Have You Ever Wondered How A Queen Bee Lays Eggs?
Honey Bee Queens have one very important job in the colony – they make honey bees and lots of them! A simple hive inspection can give you a good indication of how well a queen is performing. Capped brood, larvae, and eggs are all good signs that your queen is doing her job and that the colony is thriving. She can lay up to 1,500 eggs per day at times and the way that she does it is truly amazing. The honey bee queen places her head and front legs into the cells to measure the width of the cells, which will eventually determine the sex of the eggs that she lays. The queen lays fertilized (female) eggs in the smaller cells, and unfertilized (male) eggs in the larger cells.
43 seconds into the video, you can see the queen honey bee place her head and front legs into the cell to measure and determine which type of egg she will lay. She does it again at 1:04 into the video in case you missed it the first time 🙂
We have been keeping honey bee colonies for about three years, and although we have trained our eyes to find the Queen during hive inspections it is a rare treat to actually witness her laying eggs. There is a lot of activity on a frame of honey bees and the attendant bees are constantly surrounding her catering to her every need; mostly feeding her and cleaning up her waste and this can make it difficult to see what we captured on the video above.
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Click on the image above for a closer look at what the eggs look like once the queen bee has laid them. Move your mouse to virtually hold the frame of bees.
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