A Day in the Life of a Queen Bee

-Short Story-

~A Nurse Bee's POV~

Today is the hatching of the queen cells. I'm wondering to see which one comes out first. I'm one of the nurse bees. Twenty wax queen cells were constructed and the first to hatch is supposedly the queen. The only exception is when one other queen bee kills her which is HIGHLY unlikely. The first queen bee cell usually has the chance to kill all the other queen cells so none of them ever threaten replacing her as queen bee. The queen cells are very interesting and weird-looking. They look like acorns and point downwards unlike any other bee cells.

It's feeding time for the queen larvae. They don't just eat regular honey like all the other bee larvae. Their food is called the Royal Jelly, the creamy rich kind. Oh how I would like to taste it but, those are saved for the queen bees/larvae. My favorite queen cell is the first one. I don't know why but I just feel a connection with her which is weird but anyways. The first queen cell has already been sealed with wax capping.

They've already starved the old queen bee so she is able to fly. Poor thing. Although, she has led a pretty good life. She didn't have to work so much like all the other bees. She only had one responsibility which I will tell you later on. A couple days after she was starved, the prime swarm joined her to find a new hive (where she will continue having an easy life). How I would love to have her job... Unfortunately, I was stuck as one of the nurse bees.

The first virgin queen has hatched! She looks just like what she is supposed to look like. She was very large. I don't know how that happens. I am older than she is yet she manages to be bigger and longer than I am. She was already half the size of a worker bee, but was longer than a drone bee. She sort of looked like a wasp, but that was because of her long abdomen. Otherwise, she would have looked just like the rest of us. The gold hairs on her body was sparkly. Her wings, like all the queen bees, are shorter than her body. That was the reason she can't fly very good. She looked beautiful.

I'm wondering what she's going to do. She has two options: leave with a swarm and make a new hive or kill her other sisters. As soon as I said so, she walks over to the next queen cell (this is the most horrendous part for me) and sticks her stinger to the first wax wall. One after another, she kills them. One tear drops from eye. I was so sorry for them.

I hope she takes good care of our hive. She has the easiest job, at least from my perspective. All she has to do is fly for the first and last time in about a week in order to mate with about twenty of the male drones. Afterwards, all she has to do is lay eggs. I guess that part is hard and tiring. Our old queen bee laid approximately 2,000 eggs a day and probably 1,000,000 in her lifetime that she was in our hive. I've never experienced having to lay eggs but, from what I've seen her do, it looks easy although she has to do it all day.

This new queen bee will be staying with our hive for about one year then she has a choice to make. She will either die or decide to lead a prime swarm to a new hive which is what our old queen did. For now, I will try to enjoy my experience with the new queen. It's been a long day but the hatching of our new queen ws the most exciting (for me anyways).