How It Works Magazine » Swarm http://www.howitworksdaily.com How It Works will feed your mind with informative and entertaining answers about the world around us. Packed with articles, videos, interactive illustrations and Q&As - it's enlightening fun for the whole family...' Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:54:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Who decides which bee is going to be the queen within a bee colony? http://www.howitworksdaily.com/environment/question-of-the-day-who-decides-which-bee-is-going-to-be-the-queen-within-a-bee-colony/ http://www.howitworksdaily.com/environment/question-of-the-day-who-decides-which-bee-is-going-to-be-the-queen-within-a-bee-colony/#comments Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:38:51 +0000 Robert Jones http://www.howitworksdaily.com/?p=2227

Who decides which bee is going to be the queen within a bee colony?

The short answer is that the workers decide which egg(s) will develop into queen bees. There can only ever be one queen in a beehive. When a hive becomes overcrowded, the worker bees prepare a number of queen brood cells and the queen lays an egg in each cell. The workers then cover the egg with royal jelly. It is the jelly that makes the difference between the larva developing into a queen bee or a worker. Following
this the queen and about half of the worker bees leave the hive – this is a swarm – and look for a new place to form a hive. Back in the old hive, one of the queen cells breaks open and a new queen bee emerges. The new queen then searches out the other queen cells and stings them, killing the remaining developing queens. If two queens emerge at the same time, a fight ensues until one is dead. In a few days the new queen leaves the hive to find a mate, followed by the drones. Once the queen has mated she returns to her hive and will not leave again unless there is another swarm.

Answered by Dr Peter C Barnard, director of science, The Royal Entomological Society.

]]> http://www.howitworksdaily.com/environment/question-of-the-day-who-decides-which-bee-is-going-to-be-the-queen-within-a-bee-colony/feed/ 1 Like nothing you’ve ever seen before – the amazing flocking behaviour of starlings http://www.howitworksdaily.com/environment/like-nothing-youve-ever-seen-before-the-amazing-flocking-behaviour-of-starlings/ http://www.howitworksdaily.com/environment/like-nothing-youve-ever-seen-before-the-amazing-flocking-behaviour-of-starlings/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:29:53 +0000 Helen http://www.howitworksdaily.com/?p=350 More serene than many of our other video posts, this is a truly balletic display of avian flight

Winter evenings near this marshland in Oxford see mammoth flocks of starlings take to the sky in a nightly display of incredible aerobatic synchronicity. Watch as swarms of up to a thousand birds undulate like massive waves through the half-lit sky – and never bump into each other. It’s really quite stunning.



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