Module 1: Meet Your Queen
MEET YOUR QUEEN
Module 1 of 6 · Initiate Certification
She Is Not a Pet
A founding queen is a colony in waiting. Right now she has exactly one job: lay her first eggs and raise her first workers, alone, in the dark. Your job for the next several weeks is to stay out of her way.
This is the part new keepers find hardest. There is nothing to do. Doing nothing is the care.
Two Ways a Queen Founds
- Fully claustral — she seals herself away and raises her first workers entirely on her own body reserves, metabolising her fat stores and her now-useless flight muscles. She needs no food at all during this stage. Most species we sell found this way, including our honeypots, harvesters and carpenters.
- Semi-claustral — she forages during founding and does need small feedings. If a species founds this way, we say so on the product listing and in its care guide.
Know which one you have before she arrives. It is the first line of every care guide on this site.
The Mistake That Kills Most First Queens
Checking on her. Every time you lift the cover, pick up the tube or shine a light in, she registers it as a threat. A stressed queen will eat her own eggs. Keepers who check daily often watch their brood pile vanish and never understand why.
The rule: one brief look per week. That is it. Dark, warm, undisturbed is the entire founding protocol.
What Normal Looks Like
Weeks of apparently nothing. A small pile of eggs that seems to sit there. A queen who barely moves. All of that is a healthy founding. Depending on species and temperature, egg to first worker runs roughly four to eight weeks. Patience is a husbandry skill.