Hi,
 
I'm working on a gardening magazine piece on beekeeping in
the city. (The editor saw the hives in our community garden
and asked me to do the piece.) I've a couple of questions
that perhaps you'd answer for me.
 
Our beekeeper told me that "When the queen loses her
fecundity, the workers build queen cells and feed them on
royal jelly, and the queen takes workers and drones out of
the hive with her to swarm and go somewhere else."
 
          What happens to this proto-hive if the queen has
lost her fecundity? What happens to the queen...the other
bees?
          How many queens actually hatch from the queen cells
in the original hive? How does one become THE queen?
          Where does the royal jelly come from?
          What's in it that "allows the queen to live 5 yrs
while other bees only live 42 days"?
 
Are there other sources of beekeeping info in cyberspace
besides Penn State's PenPages?
 
Thank you so much. I just help take honey around here and
feel a little ignorant when it comes to writing about apiculture.
 
Libby J. Goldstein