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6 Responses to What happens when a queen of an insect colony dies?

1. The colony will survive until the rest of the bees/ants or whatever die of old age.

   

   Sam M
   October 28, 2013 at 2:29 am
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2. new queen will replace it! as queen of the insect lays many eggs it also lays eggs which will have queen character this makes the new queen when the old one dies!

   

   janu s
   October 28, 2013 at 2:46 am
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3. If the queen of an insect colony dies, one of the eggs is selected for special treatment. It is fed special food (called “royal jelly”), which causes it to develop into a new queen. This gives her long life and great fecundity. The total purpose of this new queen will be to produce enough eggs to repopulate the colony. She will be fed only royal jelly her whole life. Only this one egg will get this treatment, so there will be no danger of two queens being born.

   

   Don E Knows
   October 28, 2013 at 3:28 am
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4. Depends on the insect.

   Ants have lots of queens, so there is no problem.

   But if a queen in a bee colony dies, the workers convert one of the cells to a queen cell, and feed it a product that they make called royal jelly.

   In spring, when colonies are too large, half or so leave in a swarm with the old queen, and there are several cells that are being grown with queen larvae in them. When the first queen emerges, she is ushered to the other royal cells, and stings the larvae to death. If two emerge at the same time, they fight, and the workers do not stop them. If both die, the workers again usually have another cell that they nurture to “queenhood.”

   

   JR
   October 28, 2013 at 4:23 am
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5. In a bee hive, the workers are all female. They are produced from the queen by fertilized eggs. The queen stores sperm from her nuptial flight, and can regulate which eggs will be fertilized with the sperm, and which will not. Drones (males) are produced from non-fertilized eggs (haploid eggs) from the Queen.

   Typically, at some point, the workers prepare Queen cells and feed the larvae from those cells a special diet. Those diploid larvae, sisters of the workers, develop as new queens. The first one emerges, and kills the other cells. The old queen then takes 1/2 of the workers, and leaves the hive, leaving it to the new queen.

   If the old queen dies **before** there are any queen cells, then the hive is in deep trouble. What may happen is one of the workers starts to lay eggs, the larvae is fed special diet, but out pops a Drone!!! since the worker has no sperm deposits.

   In a commercial situation, you would order a new queen, which comes in a special tube. You allow the hive to get used to the new queen before you remove her from the mailer.

   See:
   http://www.eberthoney.com/QueenBees.html

   

   DrJ
   October 28, 2013 at 4:31 am
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6. It depends on the species.

   With honey bees, they will raise a new queen to replace an old or dying queen. When the new one emerges as an adult, the old one is typically killed by the workers if she is not already dead. If she dies unexpectedly, they can still save the colony be feeding royal jelly to a 1st instar larva.

   With ants, the queen is not typically replaced. The colony will go on until the workers die, though. Some colonies will rely on having multiple queens (polygyne) so one can act as a backup in case one dies.

   With Polistes (paper) wasps and other wasps with weak caste differentiation, if the queen dies, she can simply be replaced by a new dominant wasp in the colony.

   With Vespinae colonies (yellowjackets and hornets), colonies typically die off each year except for newly fertilized queens. If these die, they simply fail to start a colony. If they die after colony founding, the colony will die off in winter without reproducing.

   Termite colonies typically have many secondary reproductives in addition to the queen. If the queen dies, colonies will typically get on just fine.

   

   Zombie Roach
   October 28, 2013 at 4:46 am
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