When a virgin queen bee emerges from her cell, she quickly becomes active inside the colony.  However, her priorities are different from the average worker bee.  Upon emergence, she is hungry, and one of her very first acts is to eat honey to gain weight and energy.  Virgin queen bees have not yet fully developed their reproductive system and therefore are somewhat smaller than mated queen bees.  After hatching, a virgin queen spends approximately six days inside the colony eating honey, scurrying about, and gaining strength for her upcoming mating activities.

When you find a virgin queen bee in a colony, you will often see her running on a frame, sometimes acting like a bully and pushing other bees out of her way.  A honeybee colony normally only has one queen bee, and a virgin queen has a fierce instinct to seek out and kill any other queens.  A colony may start out with several virgin queen bees, but it won’t take long before it ends up with only one.  Even if the virgin queen finds another virgin queen still lodged, unhatched, within her cell the older virgin will sting her to death right through the cell.