Sync queue between two threads

This is a simple program which has a function start() which waits for user to enter something(using infinite loop) and stores it in queue. start() runs in a separate thread. After user enters some value, the size of queue remains zero in main. How can the queue be synchronized?
code:

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    std::thread t1(start);
    while (1)
    {
        if (q.size() > 0)
        {
            std::cout << "never gets inside this if\n";
            std::string first = q.front();
            q.pop();
        }           
    }
    t1.join();
}

"start" function is in another file and runs properly and the queue is in a header file which is included by both this file and the one containing start.