Emergence of new Queen, and Swarming of the old one

• When the queen gets older (usually in the third year) her body gives out a chemical stimulus to the workers to construct a few rearing cells for queens.
• She places one fertilized egg in each of such brood cells.
• The larvae are fed on royal jelly (saliva of workers).
• They turn into pupae and then into queens.
• The first queen to emerge from the brood cells, kills the remaining ones.
• Now the old queen takes to swarming along with a mixture of workers of all ages, leaves the old hive to develop a colony at some new site.
• The new queen in the old hive takes to mating flight with the drones and returns to the same hive, as described earlier.