What does it mean to be the queen?

We already learned that the queen bee's main job is to lay all the eggs. But what does that mean? She's the only one laying eggs, so that means that all the worker bees hatched out in the hive are her daughters.

Daughters? What about her sons? Well, they're hers too, but they're very different from the worker bees, which are all female. Don't worry, we'll get to the boy bees soon.

Her daughters, the worker bees, follow her around, touching her with their antennae (the pair of "feelers" on their heads). They feed her royal jelly, the same "milk" that the worker bees feed to queen larvae. This group of worker bees that follow the queen bee around are called the "retinue" (RETT-in-you). We call it the retinue because that's the same word that we use for a human queen's followers. The retinue follows the queen because of a perfume that she makes called the queen pheromone (FAIR-oh-moan).

Queen pheromone is powerful stuff. It is a complicated mixture of smells that tells the bees that the queen is present and that she is healthy. Some scientists even think that the queen pheromone is one reason why all the worker bees serve the queen rather than try to be the queen too. It would be like having a perfume that makes you obey anyone wearing it!

Queen honeybee photo by Flickr user steveburt1947.