QUEENS ARE THE PRODUCT of fertilized eggs; they receive a special diet throughout larval life consisting of royal jelly for the first 3 days and a modified jelly thereafter. Caste is apparently determined by food volume and the quantity of juvenile hormone and water in the larval diet. Sixteen days are needed to complete development from the egg. When a colony of bees decides to provide itself with a new queen, several are reared. Usually, the first queen to emerge kills her sisters and, if the mother is present, disposes of her as well. After about 5 days of adulthood, the virgin queen begins a series of mating flights. As a result, a queen may mate with 6 to 18 or more drones and store 5 to 12 million quiescent sperm in a special sac in her abdomen called a spermatheca. Once this initial period of copulation is passed, the queen no longer attempts to mate. Instead, her abdomen enlarges to accommodate her fertile ovaries and she becomes an egglaying machine. A queen may live I to 2 years, although life spans in excess of 5 years have been reported. Normally, however, 60 percent of the queens die or are replaced during the first year.

Relationships between individuals within a colony may be quite complex. A new queen is usually reared within a colony from one of the many eggs produced by her mother, and thus a queen is often simultaneously a mother of some colony inhabitants and a sibling of others. As a consequence of a unique sex determination system, there are three possible levels of relationship among siblings within a colony. Those that have the same father are super sisters, those whose fathers are brothers are full sisters, and those with unrelated fathers are half sisters. Thus worker bees within a colony cannot be considered a homogeneous genetic mixture. The colony is in fact a collection of subfamilies different in genetic origin.

The queen is fed and groomed by worker attendants. Her egg-laying rate is governed by the workers, probably through the amount of food they provide her. Reported maximum egg-laying rates vary; some authorities report production in excess of 2000 eggs per day. The queen is capable of laying 2 to 3 times her body weight in eggs in a single day. A queen determines the sex of her progeny by fertilizing or withholding sperm from the egg as it passes down the oviduct (the mechanism by which a queen accomplishes this is unknown). The fertilized and unfertilized eggs are deposited correctly in worker and drone cells respectively.

Although larval diet is the single factor that governs eventual development of a queen (worker larvae receive a different larval food), there are at least 53 known characteristics that differentiate a queen from her sister workers. Notably the queen's eyes are smaller and her brain is reduced in size. Her only complex behavior seems to be that of seeking out and killing sister queens and mating.

Humans have learned to control the genetics of honey bees, and production of hybrid honey bee stock has been under way for many years. The purpose of this hybridization, as with other species, is to incorporate a number of favorable characteristics into a single genetic line. To accomplish this, methods have been developed for the instrumental insemination of queens. Completion of a successful hybrid system hinges on development of an adequate means of germ plasm (sperm or egg) storage or maintenance.

The plate layouts, determined primarily by subject matter, were created for their instructional value and to enhance reader interest. The sequence of micrograph identifications thus varies according to the location of the survey micrograph(s). Unless indicated otherwise, the micrographs are oriented so that the head is to the left, the dorsal side at the top.