The phrase Virgin Queen could refer to Elizabeth I of England, Queen of England from 1558 to 1603, she never married, thus was a virgin queen. This page is about the bee version of same. Elizabeth I ( 7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603 ) was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. ...

Virgin queen is a term used in bee keeping. It describes a queen bee that has not mated with a drone. Beekeeping (or apiculture) is the maintenance of one or more hives of honeybees. ... For the Queen bee in clique & social groups, see Clique. ... Drones are male honeybees. ...

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. Fanning honeybee exposes Nasonov gland (white-at tip of abdomen) releasing pheromone to entice swarm into an empty hive A pheromone is any chemical produced by a living organism that transmits a message to other members of the same species. ...

Virgins will quickly find and kill (By stinging) any 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. This article needs to be wikified. ...

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. New honeybee colonies are formed when queen bees leave the colony with a large group of worker bees, a process called swarming. ...