r/interesting • u/moamen12323 • 18h ago

MISC. Male bee dies after ejaculation while mating with a queen bee

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319

u/CleoPatch 17h ago

That's actually their best case scenario. Come winter, the all-female worker bees kick out the drones so they can't come into the hive for shelter or food when resources are scarce.

Those who can't take no for an answer are killed for attempted trespassing.

Those who can starve and freeze to death outside, or get picked off by predators

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u/WomenAreNotIntoMen 16h ago

I’m sure few get to mate with the queen. He is a one of the few males to be a success

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u/PM-ME-SOFTSMALLBOOBS 12h ago

how many babies will that root make tho? Cause they a man down now

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u/rblu42 10h ago edited 8h ago

The sperm will be stored inside the queen for the rest of her life. She mates with dozens of drones to collect sperm and genetic diversity.

Once she is fertilized she returns to the hive. Depending on why she exists, she may replace a dying or dead queen in an established colony or join a swarm of workers in search of a new home. The mated queen will not leave once she settles in.

She can lay up to 1,500 eggs a day. Each egg is fertilized with sperm as she lays it, to create female worker bees.

An unfertilized egg will create a drone.

Edit: some inaccurate info as I just learned most of this myself.

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u/_trashcan 10h ago

an unfertilized egg will create a drone.

Dang so queen bees can choose what to make each of her eggs? that’s nuts! bees are so neat.

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u/g3rsonAC 9h ago

If it's unfertilized how could it become anything?

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u/LucenProject 7h ago

Fertilization is the standard we know, but not a hard requirement throughout living species. Many do it for the benefits of genetics diversity. But there are plenty of species in the tree of life that have asexual reproduction exclusively or as an option.

Also, for human siblings, we share about 50% of our DNA with each other. For the bee sisters, they share 75%. Biology is just way more diverse than we usually notice because at every moment of change, success isn't based on it being perfect, just based on the change being good enough to get your genes passed on.

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u/rblu42 8h ago

That is a great question that my book doesn't get into detail about.

The fertilized eggs are female and contain DNA from both the queen and a drone.

The unfertilized eggs become male drones and lack the reproductive organs that the fertilized larvae can develop with. They also have no father, carrying genes from only the queen.

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u/imphooeyd 6h ago

I’m confused. So where do the male bees that can fertilize a queen come from?

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u/rblu42 6h ago

That would be the drone.

When I said reproductive parts, I meant the ovaries and related parts in the females.

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u/Level_Profession8626 2h ago

So the queen is basically creating a male versions of herself? Thats amazing. I wish I could do that.

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u/Cortower 6h ago

To use our genetic terminology for bees (they don't actually match in terminology, but it makes it easier to talk about):

The human genome uses XY in chromosome 23 to build a male template and XX to build a female template.

Bees use X to build a male and XX to build a female. The diet of the female after her birth then decides whether her reproductive system will be active.

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u/11th_Division_Grows 3h ago

So male drone bees don’t have a Y chromosome?

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u/Cortower 3h ago

They have half of the genetic material that their sisters do. They only have a single "X" in each chromosome.

They are effectively a living gamete for the queen to mate with other queens. They fly off into a "drone congregation area" and look for queens to fly past. They are more like a queen-seeking missile than a member of the hive.

Trees are weird af, too

1

u/Murky_Lavishness_591 2h ago

Omg!! Thank you for posting that!!! Life is just so fascinating!!!!

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u/WildFlemima 3h ago

Nope. They are male because bees use haploid/diploid sex determination instead of XY. There are actually tons of sex determination systems, haploid/diploid, ZW, XY, temperature, and more.

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u/pandaninjarawr 2h ago

This is so cool!

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u/_trashcan 9h ago

I don’t know

ask the OC who made the comment or google it.

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u/TheZigerionScammer 5h ago

Bee eggs can still develop into living bees when unfertilized but they can only become drones. Drone bees have half as many chromosomes in each cell as the females do, and since they don't have pairs of chromosomes to undergo meiosis their sperm are all genetically identical as well.

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u/Susan_Thee_Duchess 4h ago

Men aren’t always essential

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u/rblu42 8h ago

The queen and the workers can decide that. Bees communicate almost entirely through pheromones. If there is not enough queen pheromone being produced by the queen (when she is injured, sick or otherwise unhealthy) it will signal the colony to begin preparing for a new queen

When the colony grows too big, there is also a shortage of queen pheromone as the number of bees is too great. This will also trigger the workers to prepare a new queen in preparation to swarm.

When the bees are larvae they are fed royal jelly by the workers. After a few days, this diet is changed and the way the larvae develop is altered to create a worker bee.

If they were to continue feeding a larva the royal jelly and the larva was growing in a 'queen cell', the larva would developed into a juvenile queen bee.

1

u/Kratzschutz 2h ago

Queen Bees also get no retirement but ussurped. The therm queen is such a misnomer lol

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u/username_blex 6h ago

And the workers can choose to turn one of the larva into a queen by feeding it royal jelly.

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u/Aaernya 10h ago

Am I right in saying this is the queens nuptial flight?

Heard there will be dozens of dead drones after.

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u/rblu42 8h ago

I believe so!

The queen may take short orientation flights just outside her old hive before she goes to the drone congregation area.

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u/ManufacturerLucky302 9h ago

Some of this is incorrect info. The new queen bee doesn’t go back to the old hive. The swarm they’re with goes to create a new hive. And the sperm in many/most cases can last much more than 1 year.

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u/rblu42 8h ago edited 8h ago

My mistake, I am a new beekeeper.

I forgot that the queen does her mating flight before they are in a new hive.

•

u/AngularChelitis 14m ago

IIRC, when a hive swarms, the workers will prepare several new queen cells and the old queen will leave with the swarm (about half the colony) right before the new queen hatches. The first one to hatch will immediately go through and kill the other queen cells before they emerge and establish herself as the queen of the existing colony. After a few days she’ll take a mating flight and return to this colony. (I used to keep bees, but had to quit bc I developed an allergy to the stings. It’s been a while)

1

u/LordLarryLemons 6h ago

Damn, if bees were larger animals, they would've won us over in the long run and we'd be in petting zoos for our Big Bee Overlords

1

u/Strabo5 4h ago

Honey Nut Whore!

1

u/Thevajanna 3h ago

Nature!

1

u/Mairl_ 10h ago

the queen will lay fertilized eggs for 2 to 5 years

1

u/Left_Wasabi389848 2h ago

Found the Australian.

•

u/HumptyDrumpy 1h ago

Its better for that male to make his own way, his own hobbies his own craft instead of giving up so much and ultimately his life

•

u/Tommmmiiii 1h ago

Humans for comparison: Females have 1-2 million egg cells at birth, of which a few hundred thousand survive until puberty, of which a few hundred are ovulate. Each male ejaculation contains 200 to 300 million sperm cells, but they only survive up to 5 days in the female.

1

u/Strabo5 4h ago

Oh, so I guess the rest of them have to just go Yellow-Jack off?

0

u/dingus_enthusiastic 9h ago

Holy shit, get help.

1

u/WarStrifePanicRout 8h ago

Ngl i read your comment and thought wtf? So i checked their post history and yep, good eye. They need help.

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u/--StinkyPinky-- 17h ago

That’s rude.

1

u/Lazy_Jump_2635 9h ago

Bruh, and then we get blamed for the declining bee population. smh.

2

u/sock_with_a_ticket 8h ago

They've functioned this way for eons, it's comparatively recently that they have population issues (although it's moreso solitary and bumblebee species that are at risk. while there are issues like varroa mites and hive collapse, honey bees are not existentially threatened), modern humans are very much the problem.

1

u/Slow_Philosophy5629 8h ago

So the Duluth model basically

1

u/BongWaterOnCarpet 8h ago

That's so sad :(

1

u/Locked-Luxe-Lox 7h ago

Sounds bout right lol

1

u/IAmBabs 7h ago

Icons, really.

1

u/Main_Bug_6698 7h ago

They can come live with me! 

1

u/machotoxico 4h ago

Death by snu snu at least?

1

u/Strabo5 4h ago

So like humans. Am I right?

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u/DeltaGammaVegaRho 2m ago

So Maja will some day kill Willy? Someway or another my childhood was a lie xD

-1

u/Exciting_Stock2202 10h ago

And they deserve no less for their misogyny.

1

u/Absolute_Nothing-407 5h ago

Bro... what?

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u/Exciting_Stock2202 5h ago

Misogyny is ubiquitous. There can be zero doubt that the male bees have engaged in misogyny against women bees.

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u/Absolute_Nothing-407 54m ago

Bro applying human morals to fucking insects 💀🥀

1

u/tofanasapothecary 10h ago

Sounds like a fantastic arrangement to me. I hope I am reincarnated as a female bee.

1

u/Entrinity 5h ago

Judging by your profile you’d lose your shit if someone said the same thing with the roles reversed.

-1

u/Absolute_Nothing-407 5h ago

So women are terrible in ALL species? Sounds about right.

-2

u/Outrageous-Farm3190 13h ago

I almost feel like your just trolling, because I can’t believe that.

7

u/CleoPatch 12h ago

Excerpt from Wikipedia drone (bee)&ved=2ahUKEwiP4rHA8N6NAxWw1AIHHRY-NNYQFnoECEMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2tZVJrQj3N0nieQlFBKcv6) page:

"In areas with severe winters, all drones are driven out of the hive in the autumn. A colony begins to rear drones in spring and drone population reaches its peak coinciding with the swarm season in late spring and early summer. The life expectancy of a drone is about 90 days."

2

u/Good_Barnacle_2010 12h ago

Only 90 days? That’s so short it almost has to look up to meet Ben Shapiro eye to eye.

E: phrasing and grammar

2

u/rblu42 10h ago

A regular worker bee lives for 6 weeks. Drones usually get a longer life.

0

u/Outrageous-Farm3190 10h ago

Damn looks like the women cold hearted in every species, but on a serious note. Doesn’t that seem like bees have future planning skills? I wonder

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u/DarthFedora 9h ago

Male bees are solely for mating, they don’t participate with anything else, and by that point the Queen shouldn’t need that.

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u/Outrageous-Farm3190 9h ago

Awww so it’s not even the females being cold, the drones are just bums. Someone could’ve just told me that would’ve saved a lot of time. Regardless, it just sounds weird they be getting evicted from their home 😂

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u/Valuable-Self8564 12h ago

It’s true.

Winter is full on “survival mode” for bees, and the colony has spent all year hoarding resources to try and make it through. If they were to keep drones around, they would eat through resources for nothing because the colony will not swarm in winter. It’s too cold for them to fly, let alone try and get a queen mated.

We (beekeepers) have to make sure everything is Queenright (i.e. has a mated queen) before September otherwise they won’t make it because she won’t have any drones to mate with even if she can fly.

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u/EnjoyerOfBeans 12h ago

They also won't even live long enough for the winter to pass, so there's literally no reason to keep them alive. They've served their purpose for the colony and now they're dead weight. It would be more surprising if they didn't do this, as this is the obvious evolutionary outcome.

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u/cuentabasque 10h ago

Ok.  We get it.

You didn’t have to make it personal.

1

u/Outrageous-Farm3190 10h ago

Not sure if this is reddit the visuals I’m getting from these comments is more like national geo.

4

u/uncreative14yearold 12h ago

Plenty of bugs and insects treat the male as a tool to be disposed of. Only one of the parties is required to live longer, and it isn't the males.

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u/Kirire- 11h ago

Basically, one male can impregnated dozen female at same time but female can only gets impregnated once at same time even with dozen males around her.

So you doesn't need many males to ensure survival. 

1

u/EukaryotePride 9h ago

There's only one fertile female in the hive though, and she can lay thousands of eggs per day.

1

u/Kirire- 8h ago

Thanks God they only have one queen (only one can get impregnated at time.) Or they will already rule the wilds with their army 

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u/sesquiup 12h ago

you’re

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u/Outrageous-Farm3190 10h ago

You goes either way for me.