What happens to the bees when the queen dies?

• A. They stop working and eventually die out.
• B. They swarm and replace the queen immediately.
• C. They become aggressive toward the beekeeper.
• D. They migrate to a neighboring hive.

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is what the queen provides for a honey bee colony. The queen is the colony’s egg-layer and also helps regulate the workers’ roles with pheromones. When she dies and no replacement queen has begun to develop, there isn’t a steady source of new bees to replace aging ones, and the colony can’t sustain brood production. Without ongoing reproduction, the hive cannot maintain itself, so it will gradually weaken and eventually die out. In some cases the workers will try to raise a new queen from young larvae, but that process takes time and isn’t guaranteed to succeed, so the longer the gap without a functioning queen, the more likely the colony will decline. The other scenarios—swarming to replace the queen immediately, becoming aggressive toward the beekeeper, or migrating to another hive—don’t reflect a reliable, sustained response to queen loss.