Virgin queen

• Virgin queen is a term used in bee keeping. It is a queen bee that has not mated with a drone.

Virgins are intermediate in size between a worker and a mated, laying queen, and are much more active. They are hard to spot on a frame, because of being runny, and they may even take flight if disturbed too much.

Virgin queens appear to have little queen pheromone and often seem to not even be recognized by the workers as being queens. A virgin queen in her first few hours after emergence can be run into the entrance of any queenless hive (or nuc) and acceptance is usually very good, whereas a mated queen is usually recognized as a stranger and runs a high risk of being killed by the older workers.

Virgins will quickly find and dispatch other emerged virgin queen (or be dispatched themselves), as well as any unemerged piping virgins. An empty queen cell will show whether the queen emerged normally (open on the tip) or whether it was torn down from the side and its queen killed by another.

When a colony is in the swarm mode, the workers may prevent virgins from fighting and one or several virgins may go with the swarm while other virgins stay behind with the remnant of the hive. As many as 21 virgin queens have been counted in a single large swarm. When the swarm settles into a new home, the virgins will then resume normal behavoir and fight to the death until only one remains. The old queen will usually be allowed to live and continue laying, but within a couple weeks she will disappear and the former virgin, now mated, will take her place.

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• The phrase Virgin Queen could refer to Elizabeth I of England, Queen of England from 1558 to 1603, she never married, thus a virgin queen.