Unlike the nuptial flight of ants and termites, there are three ways for honey bees to produce a new queen bee.
One way is when the queen bee feels she is getting old and needs a successor, she will lay fully developed female eggs, which are fed royal jelly from a young age. Another way is when the bee colony grows so large that it needs to split, the queen bee will also reproduce a new queen.
The last method is quite special.
The queen bee doesn't get the chance to reproduce a new queen and dies either naturally or from an enemy attack.
At this time, if the bee colony unexpectedly loses its queen and the conditions are right, it can use appropriately aged worker bee larvae to urgently construct a royal cell to rear a new queen.
What if the emergency construction of a royal cell fails?
It's a bit tragic then.
Incompletely developed worker bees can also lay eggs, but they can only produce male bees, and the entire bee colony will perish.
