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queen bee
Sign in to savedominant reproductive female bee in a colony
~13 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Queen (marked) surrounded by Africanized workers
A queen bee is typically an adult, mated female (gyne) that lives in a colony or hive of honey bees. With fully developed reproductive organs, the queen is usually the mother of most, if not all, of the bees in the beehive. Queens are 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.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “queen bee” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.