Who is the Queen Bee in your life?

How does the bee queen lay fertilized eggs for hundreds of times during its life span?

• Answer:

  A queen will only mate once in her life, a week or so after she emerges from the pupal cell. She mates with a number of drones -- anything from half a dozen to twenty -- and stores the sperm in a special organ called a spermetheca. As the queen lays an egg she has the choice to to fertilize it by releasing a very small number of sperm directly on to the egg, in which case the egg will develop into a female; or not fertilize it, in which case the egg will develop into a male. A queen does not lay eggs at the same rate throughout the year. In late spring and early summer when the colony is building up at its fastest rate she will be laying up to 2,000 eggs a day. In winter, she will be laying very few eggs, if any at all. The spermetheca can hold enough sperm for the queens entire laying life: usually around three years, but can be anything between two and five years. The other wonder is that the queen can keep the sperm alive and nourished for this length of time.