Knowledge of Yuking
Beekeepers use the ability of the bees to produce new queens to increase their colonies in a procedure called splitting a colony.
To do this, they remove several brood combs from a healthy hive, taking care to leave the old queen behind.
These combs must contain eggs or larvae less than three days old and be covered by young nurse bees, which care for the brood and keep it warm.
These brood combs and attendant nurse bees are then placed into a small "nucleus hive" with other combs containing honey and pollen.
As soon as the nurse bees find themselves in this new hive and realize they have no queen, they set about constructing emergency queen cells using the eggs or larvae they have in the combs with them.
The developing larva in a queen cell is fed differently from an ordinary worker-bee, in addition to the normal honey and pollen, she receives a great deal of royal jelly, a special food secreted by young "nurse bees" from the hypopharyngeal gland.
This special food dramatically alters the growth and development of the larva so that, after metamorphosis and pupation, it emerges from the cell as a queen bee.
The colony cannot survive without a fertile queen laying eggs to renew the population
