Page 76 - The Miracle of the Honeybee

74 THE MIRACLE OF THE HONEYBEE

for each worker has been established as an
62
average of 0.1μg per day. It is the queen
who maintains order in the hive, though Everything in the
it’s of course impossible for her to take a heavens and the
personal interest in all its tens of thousands
earth glorifies God.
of individual member bees.
He is the Almighty,
The queen substance is constantly
the All-Wise.
spread through the hive by up to a dozen
(Surat al-Hadid: 1)
bees that are always around her and care
for her. These lick up the chemical from the
queen’s body and transmit it to the other
bees during food transfer, which takes place by mouth. During this
process, the odor released by the queen is quickly transmitted to all other
members of the colony. This means that all of the colony’s members share
a common odor, distinguishing them from members of other colonies.
Any reduction in this secretion sets the workers into action, because
they take it as a signal that that their queen has grown old, or that their
colony has become excessively large. In either case, the workers need to
take a number of measures. 63

When the Queen Ages
As the queen bee grows older, her strength declines, and the conse-
quences begin to be seen in the hive. The rate of her egg-laying slows
down, for instance, and most important of all, there is a drop in the quan-
tity of the substance she secretes. As we have seen, the odor of this sub-
stance prevents the workers from raising a new queen, so such indications
are a sign for the worker bees. As its level reduces, the workers immedi-
ately begin to construct new royal cells and set about raising new queens.
Under normal circumstances, it is out of the question for a bee colony
to suddenly find itself without a queen. That’s because when circum-
stances suddenly change and the colony finds itself facing the danger of
having no queen, the worker bees immediately start feeding some of the