Management Matters

Imagine your business thriving like a buzzy hive on a warm summer’s day, all thanks to one crucial role—the Queen Bee role. 
What is the queen bee role in your business? The one activity that is the most important in your business, and if perfected and protected, will grow your business.

What do I mean by Queen bee role?

As beekeepers, we all know the importance of the Queen Bee. Without a queen, a colony will not survive for very long. But what specifically makes the Queen so important? What is her role?

As we know, the life of a worker bee is very short during the spring-summer months, averaging only 15-38 days. Therefore, for the colony to grow, new bees must be produced at a rate faster than their demise. To achieve this, a colony must raise tens of thousands of new bees each brood cycle, each coming from a fertilized egg. As the Queen Bee is the only bee that can lay fertilized eggs, once mated, her role of laying eggs is fiercely protected.

What do I mean by fiercely protected?

To raise tens of thousands of new bees, many jobs in the hive must be done to support this function and the hive's ultimate survival. But what you don’t see is the queen bee trying to fulfil all of these jobs like feeding larvae, collecting resources, or grooming other bees.

Even the function of fetching food for herself is taken care of by her attendants. To maximize her output, all other roles and functions within the hive are managed for her so she can focus solely on laying eggs to maximize the colony's growth. Her role of laying eggs is fiercely protected!

Now, don’t confuse the queen bee with being the most important part of a colony. She does not control the colony, and she can be replaced by the beekeeper or the colony if she dies or becomes inefficient in her role. It’s the role she serves—laying fertilized eggs—that's important, not her, herself.

What is the Queen bee role (QBR) in your company?

Now you know what is meant by the Queen bee role.
What is the most important activity in your business that makes it successful?

Just like in a hive, many jobs must be done to run a successful business, making it hard to identify your actual QBR.

What if I said the QBR is the activity that fulfils your company’s brand promise, the one action that will grow demand for what you do and bring stability to your business’s income?
And if you didn’t do this activity or were constantly distracted from it, demand for what you do would diminish?

What is it that makes your business unique? What is the Queen bee role (QBR) now?

• Is it developing the best possible relationships with honey packers that want your honey or growers that need pollination services?
• Is it the constant improvement unique traits of breeding queens?
• Is it the logistics of producing healthy, strong bees for pollination or honey production?
• Or do you have access to truly unique honey (if such a honey exists), that buyers constantly bet down your door to get?

Take the time now to identify your business’s Queen Bee role.

What are you doing to fiercely protect this QBR and those who are servicing it?

Just like the Queen Bee, the people serving the QBR should have a sole focus on this most important activity, which makes your business successful, without distraction.

As QBR is an activity, there might be multiple people fulfilling the role, and it might not be you! If it is you, how can you delegate other tasks and decision-making so you have more time to fulfil this most important role?

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