Editing Beekeeping (section)

=== Artificial swarming ===
When a colony accidentally loses its queen, it is said to be queenless.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Hepburn|first1=H. Randall|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zNuwxBP8MTUC&pg=PA448|title=Honeybees of Asia|last2=Radloff|first2=Sarah E.|date=2011-01-04|publisher=Springer Science & Business Media|isbn=978-3-642-16422-4|pages=448|language=en}}</ref> The workers realize the queen is absent after around an hour as her pheromones in the hive fade. Instinctively, the workers select cells containing eggs aged less than three days and dramatically enlarge the cells  to form "emergency queen cells". These appear similar to large, {{convert|1|in|cm|adj=on|abbr=out|spell=in}}-long, peanut-like structures that hang from the center or side of the brood combs. The developing larva in a queen cell is fed differently than an ordinary worker bee; in addition to honey and pollen, she receives a great deal of [[royal jelly]], a special food secreted from the hypopharyngeal gland of young nurse bees.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Frost|first=Elizabeth|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3V07DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA58|title=Queen Bee Breeding: AgGuide – A Practical Handbook|date=2016-05-26|publisher=NSW Agriculture|isbn=978-1-74256-922-2|language=ar}}</ref> Royal jelly dramatically alters the growth and development of the larva so after metamorphosis and pupation, it emerges from the cell as a queen bee. The queen is the only bee in a colony that has fully developed ovaries; she secretes a pheromone that suppresses the normal development of ovaries in all of her workers.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Mucignat-Caretta|first=Carla|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3I-lAgAAQBAJ&q=queen+bee+reproduction+hypopharyngeal|title=Neurobiology of Chemical Communication|date=2014-02-14|publisher=CRC Press|isbn=978-1-4665-5341-5|language=en}}</ref>

Beekeepers use the ability of the bees to produce new queens to increase their colonies in a procedure called ''splitting a colony''.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kearney|first=Hilary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sf1rDwAAQBAJ&q=splitting|title=QueenSpotting: Meet the Remarkable Queen Bee and Discover the Drama at the Heart of the Hive; Includes 48 Queenspotting Challenges|date=2019-04-30|publisher=Storey Publishing|isbn=978-1-63586-038-2}}</ref> To do this, they remove several brood combs from a healthy hive, leaving 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  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 and begin constructing emergency queen cells using the eggs and larvae in the combs.<ref name=":1"/>