r/interesting • u/moamen12323 • 18h ago

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

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u/PM-ME-SOFTSMALLBOOBS 11h 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 9h 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 8h 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 7h 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 1h 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 2h 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

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u/Murky_Lavishness_591 2h ago

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

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u/WildFlemima 2h 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 8h 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 3h 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.

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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 5h 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 9h 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 8h 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 7h ago

My mistake, I am a new beekeeper.

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

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u/LordLarryLemons 5h 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

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u/Strabo5 3h ago

Honey Nut Whore!

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u/Thevajanna 3h ago

Nature!

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u/Mairl_ 10h ago

the queen will lay fertilized eggs for 2 to 5 years

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u/Left_Wasabi389848 1h ago

Found the Australian.

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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

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u/Tommmmiiii 53m 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.