Body overview
Like all insects, a honey bee queen has three main body regions: head, thorax and abdomen. She is built around egg laying, so her abdomen is long and her reproductive organs are well developed. She has no need for the foraging equipment workers carry.
Head
- Eyes: A pair of compound eyes and three small simple eyes (ocelli) on top of the head. The queen’s compound eyes are smaller than a drone’s, which almost meet at the top of the head.
- Antennae: Two antennae used for smell and touch, important for detecting pheromones and for assessing cells.
- Mouthparts: Mandibles and a tongue (proboscis). Her mandibular glands produce much of the queen’s well-known pheromone blend. Workers feed her, so she mostly does not need to gather food.
Thorax, wings and legs
The thorax holds the flight muscles and attaches the two pairs of wings and three pairs of legs. A queen flies on mating flights and when swarming, but otherwise stays in the hive. Her wings look short relative to her long abdomen. Her legs lack the pollen baskets (corbiculae) found on workers’ hind legs.
Abdomen
The abdomen is long and tapered, often extending beyond the folded wings. It holds the ovaries, the spermatheca, glands and the stinger. In a laying queen it looks plump during the season and may look slimmer when laying slows or when she is being prepared for a swarm.
Reproductive system
- Ovaries: Two ovaries, each made up of many small tubes (ovarioles) where eggs develop. A queen’s ovaries are much larger than a worker’s.
- Spermatheca: A small round sac in which she stores sperm from her mating flights, typically for the rest of her laying life. See natural mating and instrumental insemination for how it is filled.
- Egg fertilization: As an egg passes down, the queen can choose to release sperm or not, which affects whether it becomes female (fertilized) or drone (unfertilized).
Stinger
A queen has a stinger, but it is smooth and curved rather than strongly barbed like a worker’s, so she can sting more than once without dying. She rarely stings people and mainly uses it in contests with rival queens.
Glands and pheromones
Her mandibular glands produce the queen mandibular pheromone, a blend of compounds that workers detect when they touch and groom her. Other pheromones from her body help signal her presence. These signals contribute to colony cohesion and help suppress worker ovary development. See the job of the queen bee.
Queen compared with worker and drone
For how the three castes work together in a colony, see the bee hive hierarchy.
| Part | Queen | Worker | Drone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eyes | Moderate | Moderate | Very large |
| Abdomen | Long, tapered | Shorter | Broad, blunt |
| Pollen baskets | No | Yes | No |
| Ovaries | Fully developed | Small | None |
| Stinger | Smooth, can reuse | Barbed | None |
Common questions
Do bees have antennae? Yes, all castes do.
Are worker bees male or female? Female. Only drones are male.
What are the different types of bees? Within a honey bee colony: queen, worker and drone.
For use in the field, read how to tell a queen from a worker. Overview: the honey bee queen.