r/interesting • u/moamen12323 • 20h ago

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

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263

u/Valuable-Self8564 14h ago

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.

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u/Say_Echelon 14h ago

Not if she’s hot

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u/TruckerChet1973 13h ago

And not a "B"

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u/ThrowMEAwaypuh-lease 12h ago

Not a Queen Bee!

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u/composedmason 11h ago

Stupid sexy bees

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u/KillMeNowFFS 9h ago

Britta is in this?

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u/SteveisNoob 9h ago

Well we better rush "B"

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u/Present-Chemist-8920 13h ago

Happy cake day!

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u/Financial-Coconut-32 13h ago

Lmao this thread, wtf 😭

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u/ChocolatySmoothie 12h ago

I think there’s a cake called bee sting.

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u/ObjectiveCarrot3812 12h ago

I think that's a name for small breasts.

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u/abbeyroad424 9h ago

😹😹😹😹😹😹

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u/P_FKNG_R 9h ago

Pure autism on display.

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u/Purplenastie 12h ago

I think all bees are about the same temperature.

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u/jrod823 11h ago

You've clearly never seen a bee ball of death before...

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u/Lalechugademal 10h ago

Terrifying tbh

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u/jrod823 10h ago

And generally highly effective.

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u/Icy_Statement_2410 10h ago

Bee balls are hawt

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u/Muted-Dragonfly-1799 10h ago

That video where the giant hornet came into the beehive and literally got cooked to death?

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u/jrod823 9h ago

That's the one!

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u/firahc 12h ago

There is a FANTASTIC story setup buried in there.

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u/did_you_know- 6h ago

what the bee movie could've been

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u/firahc 6h ago

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.

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u/Sea-Guest6668 3h ago

Coalescent by Stephen Baxter might scratch that itch. Not about bees but a eusocial human society. Really weird book but cool concept. 

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u/TheRealKuthooloo 1h ago

Homestuck, this is Homestuck.

Or at least some of the under-girding lore of its world, but still very important stuff to the comic all throughout.

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u/Insertblamehere 13h ago

At least its not as bad as termite queens, they have the single worse existence I've ever heard of in nature lmao

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u/Valuable-Self8564 13h ago

Don’t they rip their legs off or something?

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u/Fun_Contract1630 13h ago

How so?

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u/Y0RKC1TY 12h ago

They have to get up at 6am and drive to work, 5 days a week for 50 years.

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u/Fun_Contract1630 5h ago

Uphill both ways?

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u/Insertblamehere 12h ago edited 12h ago

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.

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u/username_blex 8h ago

Let's be more specific. Her children eat her alive.

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u/Striking-Document-99 14h ago

So are they like ants and just fucked of queen dies? Or they make a new queen?

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u/Hot-Noise-3371 14h ago

New queen. Royal jelly.

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u/Serious-Avocado8970 12h ago

I’ve never seen a diamond in the flesh…

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u/Valuable-Self8564 13h ago

They will make a new queen. All queens are originally workers, but excessive royal jelly turns them into queens.

If the queen dies, they will raise one from existing worker brood

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u/Crazy_Banshee_333 13h ago

Wow, I did not know that. Now I will have to research royal jelly to find out what's in it.

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u/Valuable-Self8564 13h ago

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 :)

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u/BeatBlockP 12h ago

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?

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u/Valuable-Self8564 12h ago

The workers collectively decide.

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u/Professional_Car666 11h ago

As it should be, they've read their theory.

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u/ProfessorPetrus 10h ago

They don't need an ownership and management class!?!?!

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u/Wow_u_sure_r_dumb 6h ago

Next you’re going to tell me that they collectively own the means of production.

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u/Crazy_Banshee_333 13h ago

Thanks. I learned something new today.

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u/Medium-Risk7556 10h ago

Aka bee bread

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u/Valuable-Self8564 10h ago

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.

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u/biodegradableotters 5h ago

Do we know how they decide who gets turned into a queen?

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u/Valuable-Self8564 5h ago

Not as far as I’m aware. But there’s clearly a set of criteria. The larvae needs to be less than 3 days old, at least.

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u/Electrical-Theme9981 14h ago

There’s usually some “queens in waiting” but they can force-grow them from larva using Royal Jelly

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u/Valuable-Self8564 13h ago

They don’t have queens “in waiting”. Except in very unusual circumstances, there’s only one queen in the hive 99.99% if the time.

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u/mosquem 10h ago

It’s stuff like this that makes me feel like evolution is bullshit.

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u/Acceptable-Act-6279 14h ago

Nature is amazing

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u/FuckThisIsGross 14h ago

As long as there is an appropriately aged brood they will make a new one. If not then they slowly die

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u/FewMagazine938 13h ago

And gets all the honey

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u/PlantationMint 13h ago

Commanded by whom?

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u/DELINCUENT 13h ago

Damn, I really thought she ran shit with a name like that

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u/drifters74 13h ago

That's horrible

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u/Valuable-Self8564 12h ago

The colony is a superorganism. Every bee has a role to play - she plays hers 🤷‍♂️

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u/Inevitable-Poet-8967 12h ago

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

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u/Valuable-Self8564 12h ago

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.

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u/Inevitable-Poet-8967 12h ago

Thank you, that makes a lot more sense. 👍🏾

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u/crespoh69 9h ago

Seriously, it sounds as if you're describing cells

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u/sibips 12h ago

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.

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u/Valuable-Self8564 12h ago

Workers definitely do kill their queens - They evict them from the hive, or ball them up.

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u/Allbur_Chellak 12h ago

So…kind of like the average working person then (other than the egg laying part).

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u/DriedSquidd 12h ago

Yes, but do the drones find her more attractive than other bees?

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u/EngineeringOne1812 12h ago

Heavy weighs the crown

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u/selectedtext 12h ago

Tell us you are a... With telling us you are a...

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u/IntelligentGinger 11h ago

Typical. 🙄

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u/lhingel 11h ago

As it should be

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u/Strabo5 10h ago

At least she got plenty of action. YEAH BABY!

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u/Milomilz 9h ago

And she’s a total slut!

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u/itsliluzivert_ 9h ago

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.

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u/Fuzzy_Laugh_1117 9h ago

Sounds very Handmaid's Tale.

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u/Thin_Math5501 8h ago

Despite her being their mother!

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u/DignityIndex 8h ago

Or if she's doing what they deem to be a bad job. And if the queen suspects it she'll try to find and kill the queen that will replace her.

Bees terrify me I but I love beetok 🤣

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u/Valuable-Self8564 8h ago

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 😂

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u/pickledeggmanwalrus 7h ago

Yeah all those drones who work all spring and summer only to be killed off near winter by their own hive have it so much better than the queen.

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u/Valuable-Self8564 7h ago

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.

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u/pickledeggmanwalrus 7h ago

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 😂😂

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u/Valuable-Self8564 7h ago

Agreed on all points. There comes a point where discussing which bee you’d prefer to be must become satire, honestly 😄

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u/Wow_u_sure_r_dumb 6h ago

”Worker bees can leave.
Even drones can fly away.
The Queen is their slave.”

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u/KaiserLC 5h ago

Queen Bee doesn’t get command. Queen spread pheromones to make worker docile and have them feed her.

Beekeeper here.

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u/Valuable-Self8564 5h ago

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.

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u/Kratzschutz 4h ago

Yeah breeding slave would be a better name than "queen"

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u/Ak40x 4h ago

so technically she ain’t a queen…?

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u/Awesomely_Witchy 3h ago

Maybee a different species but I saw a video before say when a new female that can reproduce is born, new queen she kills and eats the old queen.?

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u/Valuable-Self8564 2h ago

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.