There are definite advantages to being Queen of the hive. Perhaps the biggest advantage is longevity. A queen bee will live several years. On average, the rest of the bees in the hive have a 6 week lifespan.
The queen begins her life as a female egg...no different than a worker bee egg. At some point, her egg is singled out by the nurse (worker) bees and upon entering the larval stage is fed a substance that these workers carry in their glands....called royal jelly. This royal jelly causes the larva to develop into a larger bee and a queen is crowned. 
Within a couple of weeks, she leaves the hive to mate with several drones....in flight. Upon returning to the hive, she spends the rest of her days laying eggs. Meanwhile, worker bees are in attendance...doing all of the necessary household chores to maintain the Queen and her nursery.
In beekeeping, it is beneficial to have the queen marked with a colored dot on her thorax. This makes the job of finding the queen much easier. Although she is larger than the rest of the bees...it is often difficult to find her amongst the other 20 or 30 thousand bees in the hive.
First of all it is important to know that you DO NOT have to own a farm to have bee hives. You can raise bees in your yard or in the city if there are parks nearby. Bees need to have a nectar supply (flowers) within a two mile range from their hive. And believe me, they will find it. Honeybees are safe and keep to themselves for the most part if you leave them alone. Afterall, they have much work to accomplish in their short life spans, so they pretty much keep on task. 
In order to keep bees, you need a hive. Modern hives are wooden structures that contain frames on which the bees store their honey.
This is a part of the hive known as a "super". In it you can see several frames. The frame below is filled with honey.
It is on several of these frames that the queen bee lays her eggs. Below is a picture of a brood frame with cells of brood food.
Amazingly, the queens only job is that of reproduction. She mates with the drones (and she does that only once....midflight....and with many drones in a row). After that she returns to the hive and lays up to 2000 fertilized eggs per day. By the way, upon mating with the queen, the drones die. They serve only one purpose in the hive....stud service. The actual worker bees are all female. It is these bees that are responsible for raising the brood, building the honeycomb, acquiring the nectar and turning it into honey. They also tend to the queen, keep the hive clean, and serve as guards at the entrance.....all these jobs, held by the women!
The second floor guest room and loft/library area will be decorated in a cabin style. The bed is a rustic wooden bed and will have "Moose" bedding. Here is a picture of the grain of the wood on the headboard. The footboard matches. The moose bedding is actually a much darker green wool bedspread with a plaid flannel dust ruffle. 
With eyes skyward, I could almost imagine the warmth with which this sun has enveloped me in days past. Not so today. No warmth is felt through this frosty blanket of frigid air that forms an impenetrable barrier between me and the sun. And so I will wait, for warmer days ahead....and today I will appreciate the beauty that winter brings.
On the way to the duck pond, I stopped to look at the grass growing along a small stream that feeds the pond. This stream emanates from an underground spring that bubbles up beneath the 200+ year old log cabin on our property. The moisture has crystallized on the grass this frigid morning. And, the leaves are decorated with a sugar coating of frost.
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