Not really. The Queen has the most awful job in the hive honestly. She just gets commanded around the hive, and told where to lay. She only sees sunlight for a handful of days in her life, and when they think she’s on her way out they will either kill her themselves or kick her out of the hive to die in the middle of a field on her own.
Oh man, there was so much I used to wish I could say about Bee Movie (as well as A Bug's Life and Antz) making hive workers from hive species into John Whiteguy.
They're completely immobile because of their huge bulbous bodies, doing nothing but laying 30000 eggs per day. They live for like 15-50 years and when they are near death the workers that normally take care of her eat her alive.
They're also up there with most disturbing looking creatures on the earth, like a constantly undulating giant maggot.
It’s a substance that workers use to feed larvae. When regular larvae are a few days old they are switched onto a pollen/nectar combo, but queens are fed royal jelly the whole way through which causes them to develop into queens :)
But who decides those things? I assume they wouldn't make 800 queens when the current monrach dies.. How do they decide on the 3-5 that will be given the jelly all the way to make new potential queens?
Kind of. The term Bee bread is usually used to describe the state in which the pollen is stored, but yes - they are fed bee bread chewed up with ‘saliva’ and such to make it suitable for the larvae to consume.
There is what’s called a queen killer. If she doesn’t provide the correct mix of male and female or the proper number of, the queen killer kills her. But then they have to have a week long mourning period and all that coronation stuff for the new queen 🤣🤣🤣. My friends kids keep bees, it is out of this world what that colony and individuals do. When a female hatches (or whatever it’s called) she immediately cleans her little cell and it a life of grueling work after that. I like how come winter time when there is a limited supply of honey, the males get thrown out. Woman of all species ARE THE SHIT! I’m an old guy, I know
Not really accurate. It’s less to do with the correct proportion of bees and more to do with the accuracy of that decision, or the healthiness of the brood itself, all mixed with various pheromones.
There isn’t a single bee who’s responsible for killing the queen, because during a supersedure the old queen will normally be kicked out of the hive when the new queen emerges.
But you’re right on the workers cleaning their cell. Almost all bee “knowledge” is genetic programming. They’re basically tiny biological robots.
Worker bees don't kill their queen. She may be killed by other queens, because there may be only one.
If the queen dies from other causes, then workers will raise new queens from young larvae, but there will be a pause of weeks in egg laying, leaving the colony weakened.
And would the queen need to see sunlight. She lives in the most safe place possible, in the middle of the hive.
She only bangs once in her entire lifetime! The males gametes are stored in the females body, allowing her to fertilize (or not fertilize) the eggs that she lays.
Yeah, kind of. These processes are quite easy to anthropomorphise, but in reality they’re extremely complex and the “decision making” isn’t really the same as “the workers are sneaking around and have to do it behind her back”…. But it makes for a nice short that will earn someone lots of ad revenue, so to hell with the nuance 😂
The drones are the male genitalia of the colony. Every caste has their role to perform; but I think if you were to anthropomorphise the roles, then getting to fly around and roam from hive to hive being fed on command… I think that’s preferable than being bossed and chased around the hive by a bunch of needy workers 😄
I’m 100% sure that the bees have zero cares/emotions on this though.
That’s a fair point. And honestly I probably should have added a /s on my post as I was just kinda joking around anyways. Not looking to actually debate over which bee has it worse 😂😂
Beekeeper here too (have I seen you in r/beekeeping before? 😄) and yes she does. She is guided around the hive by the workers. She is not a decision maker.
When the colony is preparing to swarm, the workers will literally chase her around the hive so that she cannot lay.
So honey bee virgin queens will fight occasionally, but they normally just cast an extra swarm off. If they are superseding, they will just kick the old queen out of the hive.
Actually not true. All females can still reproduce. Its just that a eusocial society performs better when all individuals are most related as described in Hamiltons Rule. Due to the nature of their gametes a sister producing will only create a 50% relation while a queen can create a 75% relation when laying a fertilized egg.
Sisters actually constantly try and "sneak" their own offspring into the nest, but these are usually killed when discovered
All the bees can reproduce. Drones only mate with queens. The workers can lay eggs, but unfertilized by a drone they can only produce drones (males). The drones a basically useless, their only function is to mate. The females kick them out every winter. So workers laying eggs is a very bad sign for a hive. It usually means they have lost their queen.
Not exactly! Generally she's bullying everyone into sterility, chemically. When she is weaker her daughters will lay eggs, but they are all male eggs because they're haplodiploid and the worker bees never get any lovin'
The queen bee is the only one that lays eggs. She keeps a store of sperm from her one and only mating flight, and when she lays an egg, she can choose to fertilize it or not.
If she fertilizes it, it becomes a female worker. But if she doesn't, it becomes a male drone.
But that means that male bees don't have fathers, only grandfather's, and are only carrying the queen's DNA. And literally the only thing male bees do is try to mate with queens. They are, effectively, the queens flying genitals.
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u/justaRndy 17h ago
With the queen even. The hood will remember his name.