> 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?
 
The beekeeper has confused two separate processes.  When a queen loses
her fecundity, the other bees start raising some new queens.  The new
queen will replace the old queen, but they sometimes coexist for a while.
In this case the old queen and other bees do _not_ leave.
 
If the time of year is right and the hive is crowded, the bees will _swarm_.
In this case the bees start raising queens, and the old queen and most of the
bees leave the hive en masse to form a new colony.  In this case the old
queen is still fertile, although probably past her prime.
An experienced beekeeper can tell what the bees are up to when he spots
queen cells.  When the bees want to swarm there are more queen cells and
they are located along the bottom of combs.  Supersedure cells are usually in
the middle of the comb.
 
>           How many queens actually hatch from the queen cells
> in the original hive? How does one become THE queen?
 
Usually the first queen to hatch will kill the other queen cells.  If two
queens meet they fight to the death (survival of the fittest).
 
>           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"?
 
Worker bees work themselves to death (they can live ~6 months in the winter
when there's nothing for them to do but keep warm)  The queen does nothing
but lay eggs.
 
-Mike