Retinue
Lexikon
The retinue refers to the group of young nurse bees that constantly surrounds and attends to a bee colony's queen.
The retinue refers to the group of young nurse bees that constantly surrounds and attends to a bee colony's queen. Because the worker bees face the queen in a star-shaped pattern as they do so, this creates the impression of a royal court, hence the name. The composition of the retinue keeps changing, as new nurse bees repeatedly take over this task.
The bees in the retinue perform several vital tasks: they feed the queen with brood food they have produced themselves, groom her with their mouthparts, and stay in constant contact with her through their antennae. In doing so they pick up the queen pheromone on their bodies and spread this scent through the whole colony by passing it on. This is how the entire colony learns that an intact, laying queen is present.
For beekeeping practice, the retinue is also a useful search cue: where worker bees conspicuously crowd in a star-shaped pattern around a spot on the comb and face toward it, the queen is usually sitting right there, which makes it easier to find her during a colony inspection. If this typical picture is missing, it can be an early sign of a possible loss of the queen, although this alone does not yet amount to a reliable diagnosis.