Does a queen bee also lay eggs when she sleeps?

Answer

Dear Bram,

a queen bee lays a lot of eggs, up to 1600 eggs per day, this is indeed an average of one egg per minute. The queen sleeps very little or not at all during the summer months and lays eggs continuously. Egg-laying is occasionally interrupted because the queen also needs to eat. About twenty young worker bees surround the queen and feed her continuously with royal jelly; this is very powerful food that the queen needs to lay so many eggs per day. In the summer months, the number of eggs can even rise to 2000 per day, which is an average of 80 per hour. Egg-laying continues into October; then a quieter period occurs for the queen, during which she can take it easy for a while. Egg-laying can start again from the end of January. It is still very cold outside. The bees are in the beehive in a kind of ball, this is called the winter cluster, within which the queen is located. The bees in that cluster move with their wing muscles, thus making heat. Occasionally they change places, and the bees from inside the cluster take the place of the bees outside. The queen always stays in the middle of the cluster and lays a small number of eggs every day. Inside the cluster are the queen, the eggs and the larvae sufficiently warm to continue living. Once the temperature rises outside, more eggs are laid. Old eggs that do not hatch are brought out by the worker bees, and then the cell is cleaned again, after which a new egg can be laid. The queen can live to be 4 to 5 years old; but usually she doesn’t get that old. If the worker bees notice that the queen no longer lays as many eggs, and therefore performs less well, a new queen is created from an egg of the old queen; and the old queen is replaced. But that’s another, and more complicated, story.

Kind regards,

Hans