Edit: Thanks for the explanation and all the comments. I had no idea of how it was and also wasn’t expecting it to be like that. Curiously interesting!
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It doesn’t become one, it’s born that way. The worker bees feed chosen “bee maggots” with a special juice called “Gelee Royal”. This pushes the development of the maggot to become a queen.
Queen bees lay eggs in the hive.
Eggs that were fertilized by drones (male bees) will become female.
Unfertilized eggs will become drones.
When the eggs hatch, they become larva. Most females just mature normally and become workers.
A few female larva are selected to become queens, so they are fed a special concoction the bees produce called royal jelly. ~~The royal jelly allows the bee to mature differently so it can properly reproduce.~~ When these new queens mature, they then fight until only 1 queen remains.
Edit: the royal jelly isn’t actually what makes a bee a queen. The royal jelly is just a protein substitute because larvae selected to be queens aren’t fed pollen (what bees eat for protein), and that’s what makes them become a queen.
They only produce new queens if the current queen is dead (using previously laid eggs) or when the queen has left to make a new hive.
Talk about royal treatment! These lucky bee maggots get their own special juice to become a queen bee.
There are a couple ways/reasons that a hive would create a queen. Ideally from the hives point of view, it is spring/summer and the hive is ready to swarm and create a second hive. The worker bees will create a special cell for the current queen to lay an egg in. This cell is going to be facing more vertically as opposed to horizontal like most cells. After being laid, this egg will be fed something called royal jelly. This is the real trigger. It is primarily diet that causes what would have been a worker bee to become a queen bee, as genetically they are not different. After being fed this diet, it will take about 15 days to go from fresh egg to emerging queen (a worker is about 21 days)
Worst case scenario is that the current queen dies unexpectedly. If this happens, the workers will take some of the youngest eggs they have, convert the cell so that it is vertically facing, and begin to feed the egg/larvae royal jelly. Everything else is the same, however the success rate is somewhat lower depending on the age of the egg when the conversion begins.
TL:DR It is primarily diet that causes the difference. There are other changes as well with development, but all are triggered by diet
what exactly does the royal jelly to/change to the chosen ones physically?
A ‘bee maggot’ getting a royal treatment? Talk about living the high life! 🐝👑
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