Queen (insect)
In state-building , socially living insects, the queen is the female, who usually lays the eggs alone and often founds the colony . It is usually larger than the workers and drones (males). The queen is morphologically specialized in laying eggs and cannot carry out many tasks, such as nest building, or only worse than the workers. Most queens have greatly enlarged ovaries compared to normal workers .
The queen thus plays a central role in the social fabric. It influences the behavior of other insects via pheromones .
The queen bees , also called queens and hive mothers, are fed the extremely nutritious royal jelly in the larval stage ; this food is held responsible for the extraordinary growth.
In the case of bumblebees, it is not yet fully understood why some eggs hatch queens in autumn. There seem to be differences between the individual bumblebee species.
The ants there depending on the type a queen ( Monogynie ) or multiple queens ( polygyny ). The functional role of the queen is mostly taken over by a gynomorphic female, more rarely by an intermorphic or ergatomorphic form.