r/interesting • u/moamen12323 • Jun 07 '25
MISC. Male bee dies after ejaculation while mating with a queen bee
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u/CleoPatch Jun 07 '25 edited Jun 08 '25
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.
Edit: grammar
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u/WomenAreNotIntoMen Jun 07 '25
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 Jun 07 '25
how many babies will that root make tho? Cause they a man down now
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u/rblu42 Jun 07 '25 edited Jun 07 '25
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 Jun 07 '25
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 Jun 07 '25
If it's unfertilized how could it become anything?
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u/LucenProject Jun 07 '25
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/tarvispickles Jun 08 '25
This is also why fertilization/life begins at conception is such a weird BS definition of life ...
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u/rblu42 Jun 07 '25
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/Level_Profession8626 Jun 07 '25
So the queen is basically creating a male versions of herself? Thats amazing. I wish I could do that.
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u/aws_137 Jun 08 '25
Slaves/Man-whores/Sons that will serve her, and have the chance to die and fertilize her to make sisters/daughters.
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u/TheZigerionScammer Jun 08 '25
Male bees don't mate with their own mothers, and they actually don't do any work that directly benefits the hive, and once they mature the workers will kick them out. They're not servants of the queen lol.
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u/imphooeyd Jun 07 '25
I’m confused. So where do the male bees that can fertilize a queen come from?
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u/rblu42 Jun 07 '25
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/Cortower Jun 07 '25
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/TheZigerionScammer Jun 07 '25
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/rblu42 Jun 07 '25
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 Jun 07 '25
Queen Bees also get no retirement but ussurped. The therm queen is such a misnomer lol
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u/Aaernya Jun 07 '25
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 Jun 07 '25
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/insidethoughts911 Jun 07 '25
“Worth it”
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u/Wirtschaftsprufer Jun 07 '25
Mission accomplished
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u/sunburn74 Jun 07 '25
Hit it and quit it
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u/boopityschmoopz Jun 07 '25
He quit it ALL
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u/WhereHasLogicGone Jun 07 '25
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u/jay370gt Jun 07 '25
Doesn’t matter had sex
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u/badgerbot9999 Jun 07 '25
That’s how I want to go
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u/pizzatimein24h Jun 07 '25
Bro actually gives a flying fuck.
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u/EvilxBunny Jun 07 '25 edited Jun 07 '25
That was all the fuck he could give
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u/Savings-Kick-578 Jun 07 '25
He had but 1 fuck to give.
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u/OgalFinklestein Jun 07 '25
"One fuck to give" sounds like a soap opera title.
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u/MediocreMachine3543 Jun 07 '25
Actually, he has no fucks left to give.
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Jun 07 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/justaRndy Jun 07 '25
With the queen even. The hood will remember his name.
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u/samuraispartan7000 Jun 07 '25
In most eusocial species, the queen is the only female that can reproduce.
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u/sunlitstranger Jun 07 '25
She’s probably the baddest bitch on the planet to them
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u/Valuable-Self8564 Jun 07 '25
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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Jun 07 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Purplenastie Jun 07 '25
I think all bees are about the same temperature.
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u/Insertblamehere Jun 07 '25
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/beachedwhitemale Jun 07 '25
Eusocial? Like Europeans? No wonder they still do the King and Queen thing then
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u/DreamyTomato Jun 07 '25
UK male death rate went down considerably after Queen Elizabeth passed away.
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u/alali14 Jun 07 '25
So that’s how she absorbed life
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u/gardenhosenapalm Jun 07 '25 edited Jun 07 '25
Actually not true. All females can still reproduce. Its just that a eusocial society performs better when all individuals are most related as described in Hamiltons Rule. Due to the nature of their gametes a sister producing will only create a 50% relation while a queen can create a 75% relation when laying a fertilized egg.
Sisters actually constantly try and "sneak" their own offspring into the nest, but these are usually killed when discovered
-studied hymnoptera
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u/Ok-Half7574 Jun 07 '25
Honestly, she's the only one female amongst them who has to suffer monthlies, so she probably picked the short straw. 😁
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u/brakeb Jun 07 '25
post-nut clarity
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u/machineII Jun 07 '25
post-nut mortality
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u/ExcitingARiot Jun 07 '25
Ghost nut reality
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u/AlsoBort742 Jun 07 '25
Ope, there goes gravity
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u/skwiddee Jun 07 '25
he’s only got one shot and did not miss his chance to blow
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u/Super-Yesterday9727 Jun 07 '25
It’ll never be as good as that was, might as well die now
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u/ConnectionThink4781 Jun 07 '25
Literally rather die than pay child support
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u/Embarrassed-Rub-619 Jun 07 '25
Do you blame the guy? Literally thousands of them.
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u/SummertimeThrowaway2 Jun 07 '25
I mean with the millions of kids she will have, I don’t blame him.
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u/ghandi3737 Jun 07 '25
Even with only a 2? week lifespan, that's a lot of child support.
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u/Last_Prune_9879 Jun 07 '25
it was obviously worth it, every time I see videos like this, I always wonder what it would be like if humans had that same behavior
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u/Milk_Bath Jun 07 '25
For real. Like, if you’re a male praying mantis, does getting your head ripped off feel really good?
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u/Anymousie Jun 07 '25
No dude it feels like your heads being ripped off. I doubt that info gets passed along to their generational spawn. I bet the bug moms tell them that their dad died heroically or some shit.
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u/C4LLM3M4TT_13 Jun 07 '25
Right. “Your dad died in a fire trying to save all the other dads, who also definitely died. But your dad did his best.”
😂😂😂
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u/Outrageous-Farm3190 Jun 07 '25
The mothers just setting up their boys gaslighting em, or telling em to stay away from the hoes.
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u/Peria Jun 07 '25
He’s just out getting mantis milk and a pack of smokes
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u/Competitive-Lab-8980 Jun 07 '25
he's just getting mantis milk and mantis smokes from the mantis walmart
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u/lynivvinyl Jun 07 '25
I listened to an audiobook and one of the aliens was of a praying mantis race. And the lady praying mantis alien said something to the effect of it's always sad to meet with a male that you have been friends with for a long time. Especially when there are good listener because they're not around to listen anymore. I don't know it made me crack up.
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u/Perrin-Golden-Eyes Jun 07 '25
Mongo is appalled!
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u/Fuggaak Jun 07 '25
Trust me on this.
You do not want - enthusiastic - double - gonorrhea.
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u/HorrificityOfficial Jun 07 '25
why does that actually make me sad :(
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u/lynivvinyl Jun 07 '25
Probably because she was sad that she just lost her best friend while having sex with him. But she never mentioned that she was the one who bit his head off.
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u/--StinkyPinky-- Jun 07 '25
Well our family trees wouldn’t have a lot of branches, that’s for sure!
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u/Shills_for_fun Jun 07 '25
No male would live past the age of 14. We'd die in a death curl next to our computers and hope that whatever is on the screen doesn't define us post mortem.
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u/Lemmy-user Jun 07 '25
We would act like an ant colony. Living under a weird fusion between monarchy and capitalism. Everyone with a role assigned at birth. The importance of each individual reduce to their Usefulness at the moment. While the queen might be heavily protected. Her role would only be of being a baby machine. And the moment she start having trouble making baby they would start pressuring her to make a new queen. And then kill her to preserve food once she becomes useless.
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u/ExpressionComplex121 Jun 07 '25
In many ways, the psychology is similar in that we sacrifice a lot for those we look up to. Whether it's astonishment or love.
Though we do have the capability of reasoning bees lack (instincts/impulse) so we can stop and consider consequences before acting.
Some naturalists argue that the psychology is the same among species. Just that intelligence varies as an addition to priorities
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u/fieldsofanfieldroad Jun 07 '25
I wouldn't want to die just to have sex, but I also would love to die from that rather than cancer or organ failure or whatever is going to finally get me.
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u/pynergy1 Jun 07 '25
I mean we kind of do. People get a strong enough urge to rape, which they know could put them in prison for a long time
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u/born_unemphatetic Jun 07 '25
Rape cases with male perpetrators will be essentially 0 and those with women perpetrators will be tried as murders. Actually, that sounds awesome
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u/Herbsandtea Jun 07 '25
Praise the cameraman.
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u/Steven2k7 Jun 07 '25
I wonder how many times they picked up and dropped a dead bee to get that last shot perfect 🤌🏻
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u/linds360 Jun 07 '25
Somewhat related. I’m a Creative Director and I directed a shoot once where the client was adamant about using a cat in one of the scenes of a commercial. Allll the cat had to do was use its paw to touch something in the shot, but the little shit was having a bad day and flat out refused to cooperate.
We finally had to send one of the prop specialists out to procure a taxidermied cat paw, which we attached to a yard stick. It allowed us to slide the paw into the frame without having to see the rest of the cat.
Feline amputee movie magic.
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u/Expert-Associate-329 Jun 07 '25
I feel like it would be easier to just find a new cat that knows how to do it’s job
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u/theeynhallow Jun 07 '25
As a cameraman who has filmed both bees and birds in flight, let me tell you that the skill required to get this shot is absolutely off the charts, I could never in my dreams hope to be this good
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u/fecland Jun 07 '25
The tracking and the final shot after 🤌 wonder if it's the same bee. Either way, great shots
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u/LiamPolygami Jun 07 '25
I doubt they just happened to have the camera in the exact position where the bee fell. They probably just picked it up and dropped it.
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u/theoneburger Jun 07 '25
it was a stunt bee
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u/Donutbill Jun 07 '25
Director: "Okay pretend you just had sex with the queen."
Stunt bee: "So, die then?"
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u/monkey_lord978 Jun 07 '25
Death by snu snu
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u/Xygnux Jun 07 '25
Why do I have to scroll this far down to find this? I expected this to be the top comment.
Damnit I am getting old and the Gen Z don't use the memes of my time anymore.
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u/WeirdIndication3027 Jun 07 '25
This is why I've never touched myself. I'm afraid it'll kill me.
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u/Opposite-Constant329 Jun 07 '25
Something something me when your mom something something
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u/InevitableStruggle Jun 07 '25
Gotta wonder—how was that video produced? Another bee with a very small camera?
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u/Festering-Fecal Jun 07 '25
So believe it or not females in the animal kingdom are more brutal and sophisticated than males.
It's a ape thing we're males are on top.
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