The queens are developed from larvae selected by worker bees and specially fed in order to become sexually mature.
I think there might be a possibility that a queen will spawn if there are already worker bees in a hive + some drones in the inventory of a hive. But like with turkeys, a queen will never spawn by only male (drone) bees.
A mature hive can indeed produce another queen. A fresh hive will not. However, if a bee keeper lets two queens exost in the hive for any extended period of time one of the queen bees will simply fly away and take half the hive population with her.
I got one in my hive ~1.5 days after building it. I assume a mature hive is a hive with worker bees. I noticed a drain in worker bees though, either when the two queens coexisted or when the second one spawned.
I have neither the crayons nor the time to explain it to you.
JC wrote:I'm not fully committed to being wrong on that yet.
What is a delphic bee? I was looking up bee skeps on the wiki, and there are 3 bee types listed: drones, queens and delphic bees. Are those the queens that spawn in a mature hive if you remove the original queen?
has anyone figured out the seemingly random loss of drone bees? does it cost a drone to make workers? do they randomly die? or can you only have ( X ) number of drone bees in a hive without them leaving? or is it maybe because someone put another hive near by they are trying to balance the amount of drones in each hive?