It’s funny that pollination is a better analogy for human reproduction than what goes on with bees.
Now Susan, one of you will be chosen to make ALL the babies, while the rest of you will be sterile workers that serve the queen, building structures and gathering and storing food for her offspring.
You won’t have much interaction with boys, but a lucky few of them will have their turn with Queen and die immediately after (because their penis gets ripped off in the process). You will have to drive any remaining males out of the hive before it gets cold, they aren’t worth keeping alive over the winter. New ones will be made in spring.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 1 week ago
Bees are actually a democracy, the workers don’t serve the queen. Think about when a family is driving home from school and the kids start chanting “I want McDonald’s!” Now imagine the kids are the ones driving the car. That’s bees. They’re getting that McDonald’s. The queen doesn’t get any say.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 week ago
I’m sure I’m sounding argumentative. You are right and wrong. The colony will refuse to serve the Queen based on her egg production, which can never last forever, supersedure is genetically good for the colony but can result in a short time of stagnation. They can store sperm for a few years, but shit gets stale eventually. Queens are actually born fairly regularly, but are killed in short order. After a few years the one birthing all the eggs experiences senescence.
This is actually a good evolutionary strategy, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened.
(There is no disrespect here, but we need to separate human terms from natural ones. And saying bees are democratic, when they are completely controlled by hormones is a bastardization of that word)
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 1 week ago
Take a decision like moving house. When bees want to move their hive, they swarm. When other bees notice a swarm starting, they have to make a decision to swarm or not to swarm too. If enough bees to set up a new colony swarm, they’ll pack up and move and set up a new hive. But if they don’t reach critical mass (or if humans intervene and keep the queen at home) they won’t be able to make a new hive, so they stop swarming. In this way, the biggest decision a beehive typically faces looks an awful lot like a political rally in a democracy.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 5 days ago
Concentrations of pheromones explains your question.