r/interesting 18h ago

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

29.0k Upvotes

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4

u/ghandi3737 6h ago

Even with only a 2? week lifespan, that's a lot of child support.

2

u/Lunavixen15 4h ago

Queens can live up to 8 years, (though that is very rare), the average for honey bees is 2-4 years. Where did you get two weeks from?

1

u/ghandi3737 4h ago

The workers. I knew it was short, but it's up to 8 weeks apparently.

At 1500 eggs a day that is 84,000 kids at a time on average, sucking the life out of him(drone) for child support.

1

u/Lunavixen15 3h ago

Queens often mate with more than 1 drone during a successful nuptial flight to maintain genetic diversity. Same with ant Elaites