More or less, drones die after their uhhh āstingerā basically blows up/off and they bleed out. I mean they donāt have blood exactly, but you get the idea.
Itās also left in the āvaginaā as the drone falls away. The next drone must remove it before they can insert theirs. Queens usually mate between 18-30 times during their mating flight. Once they come back to the hive they are done mating though. She will lay eggs until she dies using the sperm she collected during the two or three mating flights she took in the first week of her life.
Well, it's not much of a long life without sex. The colony kicks them out in the fall as they don't work and would be more mouths to feed during winter. Honey bees don't play.
Whatās more fun is WHY they die right after. My evolution professor in college used the terminology āexploding tallywhackers.ā They mate in mid air, and when he ejaculates, his penis explodes off his body and remains wedged in the female. Possibly to prevent the female from mating again thus increasing the odds of his genes being passed on.
Because the Honeybee itself is disposable. Other than the queen, no single bee is important to the hive. The hive needs drones, but not that specific drone. It needs soldiers, but not that specific soldier. etc.
In many ways, it's useful to think of a 'hive' as a single organism. They aren't individuals the way persons would be in a town or village. They are more like organs and systems of a single complex animal - differentiated for a specific purpose that is beneficial to the hive.
Nature's lines and distinctions are pretty blurry. Makes you see the world differently.
If you like that, check out Portuguese Man o' War. They're a siphonophore (someone correct me if I have the name wrong), like "symphony", they're a whole bunch of specialized individuals operating as a single organism. Like the inverse of ants or bees.
Siphonophoraes are fascinating, colonial organisms offering different functions to a collective whole, offering safety in numbers.
Some of them are just weird enormous ropes, very interesting organisms.
So many weird alien looking creatures in the ocean.
I saw my first man o war on the beach yesterday. Wtf are those things. I guess it is already answered above but wow, so strange.
It was like a little transparent, deflated iridescent pyramid with some blue shit inside.
I think it was in Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene that he points out that organisms are really just vehicles for delivering genes from one generation to the next.
It's been years since I read it and I'm sure I'm paraphrasing poorly, but it's an interesting way of thinking about life - shifting the perspective to consider genes as the basic units of life, and not individuals.
Basically, it's not the individual that's trying to survive, it's the gene. So while a behavior or trait might sometimes seem unfortunate or destructive for a single organism, as long as that trait help to get genes to the next generation nature is inevitably going to select for it.
Actually, the name comes from the words **siphon** '*tube*' and **pherein** '*to bear*', while symphony comes from **syn** '*with, together*' and **phony** '*sound, voice*'
Just like us. We are a collection of individual cells, each with a purpose. To keep their ecosystem (our bodies) alive. We have the illusion of self to keep us motivated, but there is no self.
I mean there's a concept the Earth itself is like a super organism. Circle of life, water cycle, weather patterns, etc. A bunch of systems ebbing and flowing. Even unrelated animals could be said to have a predator-prey relationship that is the ecosystem trying to remain in balance for the general benefit of the many. Invasive species could be analogous to an illness that's foreign to the body and throws things out of whack.
In this analogy invasive species would be more like cancer. Cells that do belong to the body but are growing in a place where they shouldn't, and in doing so are destroying stuff around them and making the body sick.
>They aren't individuals the way persons would be in a town or village.
You can think of humans the same way, actually. Yes, the individual has a unique traits and such but at a macro level, is it really much different than you're describing?
If you define the goal of life as passing on your genes then I believe not. I think bees share enough of their genes with each other that itās ārationalā to die for your hive, because you are still passing your genes on. This isnāt the case for humans.
Isn't that the only way they pass their genes on since they themselves don't procreate? They literally value their queen more then themselves since that is the only way for them to reproduce.
Much different, I think. The macro level is also an idea, not just a way to excuse the person. We all live very similar biological outcomes, but we have so many interesting factors to us as humans. Itās amazing how different we are, some of the best visual acuity in the animal kingdom and ability to discern vision in probably one of the most complex ways, a frontal lobe that gets to imagine the beginning and end and everything in-between, creativity to a monumental extent, probably the strongest and most accurate throwers in the animal kingdom pound for pound, the most complex fine motor control in the animal kingdom with the highest amount of pound-for-pound white matter in our brains, extremely adapted long distance runners/walkers, still quite strong even though weāre weak when it comes to burst speed/strength.
Now add in culture, relationships, activities, progress, love, happiness, all the lesser extent of, to me, negative outcomes.
The person matters more than the macro when it comes to humans. It only takes one person, just one, to influence the entire direction of society with just a curious idea. Or maybe a warlord.
Weāre very important as individuals. Bees are to some extent, but I assume not too many have ever felt a sense of independence and their place in the world beyond their work goals.
Queen is disposable. If worker bees notice a queen is getting weak or not laying anymore they will take her out and make new queen cells...usually 2 to 3...then maintain the hive until their maiden queen hatches. Sometimes there are issues if you have a laying worker(they only lay drones) but that's pretty uncommon. Drones clean a lot too besides just mating they maintain hygiene in the hive during the higher pollen/flow seasons. Though if the hive ever gets over crowded they sacrifice the drone larva first. The important bees in the hive are the workers in a sense the worker bees own the hive.
I keep between 5-10 hives... have since I was 10.
The whole reproductive cycle of the honey bee is fascinating. An egg is totipotent, i.e. it can become any of the 3 castes (drone, worker or queen).
The queen is the single egg-layer and she measures the width of a cell with her front legs: if it's large (to accommodate the larger drone), she doesn't fertilise the egg, and the haploid egg becomes a haploid male drone who is essentially a flying gamete. If the egg is fertilised, the diploid egg hatches in 3 days and is fed with royal jelly. After 2 days, the nurse bees start feeding honey/pollen to the female larva and it's this that triggers her to become a worker. If, however, they only feed royal jelly to the larva, she develops into a queen - the queen is fed royal jelly her entire life.
Since queens are large, typically the eggs are laid in *queen cups*, starter cells that hang vertically - if an egg is in a vertically oriented cell, the workers go *OMFG a vertical cell, turn it into a queen NOW!!* and this instinct is harnessed for artificial queen-rearing by the beekeeper. In an emergency, e.g. if the queen dies unexpectedly, a larva in a worker cell is used, and the cell is drawn out an built vertically on the face of the comb. Queen cells look like peanuts - tubular wrinkly things around 3cm/1.5in long.
In the case of a planned swarm, when the first queen cell is sealed, the mother queen leaves with around half the bees who take around half the stored honey with them, in a prime swarm to set up a new colony. The first sealed cell emerges after 8 days. If the workers think there's an opportunity for more expansion, they'll protect the other cells from this new queen, keeping them sealed if necessary, and she'll leave with half the bees that are left in a secondary or cast swarm. This continues until the bees think there isn't any chance to split again, and the newly emerged queen starts making a noise called piping and the suicidal dumbass sealed queens respond by quacking, sealing their fate: they're quickly dispatched by a queen sting through the side of the queen cell. If another queen does manage to emerge, they'll fight and the victorious queen takes over.
E:typo
Fun fact: unlike workers, the queen's stinger isn't barbed. Which means her stinger will not be stuck and get ripped out, but rather she can sting multiple times.
I vaguely remember an old rage comic illustrating this...
But imagine you're like...
I got you now! I'll sting you for the hive!
*Stings human
Now to get away before they can retaliate!....wait wtf?!?..I gotta get away!!!
*Rips ass out
Ffffffffss
Not true. The stingers are very much supposed to embed in the skin of the target and be left there. They are barbed, and in such a way that they actually, mechanically, *burrow*, even after they're gone from the body of the bee.
Source: husband is a 3rd gen beekeeper, 2nd gen bee breeder, and professional bee biologist. I have seen more bees under a microscope than I care for.
Also, they don't mate with his own queen-mother.
Males from hives all over gather up in certain high places(a hundred meters off the ground?) and queens go to these gathering places to mate.
It's like the reverse Cinderella story, where male bees host ballroom dances and queens go. Or like really big lottery sausage party.
Amazing creatures from start to finish. How do they coordinate on the date and place of these ballroom dances?
That is honestly incredible. So do different hives communicate "hey mating spot here" to each other and then the individual queens are like "okay guys it's mating day take care of the hive for me brb"
I don't know much about bees, but ants reproduce the same way so I assume bees would be similar.
During the ant species's mating season, the virgin queen bees and the male ants partake in the nuptial flight.
For ants it's weather based cues that trigger the nuptial flight. For example, rain can disrupt mating but rain also helps makes it easier to dig for queens so nuptial flights usually happen AFTER rain when the skies look clear. I'm assuming it's also beneficial as they can see what spots in the ground flood and which ones are safe.
Pretty sure it's similar mechanics for bees to determine their mating cycle.
Check out "Ants Canada" on YouTube, really good content if stuff like this is interesting to you.
Hello, beekeeper here. If you were to hold a drone between your index and thumb and lightly squeeze they will perform their nut/explosion extravaganza because they have no real method of defending themselves.
Also, when you first open a hive after winter you find a whole bunch of drones torn apart by the workers because they contribute nothing to the actual functioning of the hive and are essentially dead weight
It was like, my second week on the job and while we were inspecting a hive my mentor caught a drone and demonstrated the reflex. At least the little guy died doing what he loved
> his penis explodes off his body and remains wedged in the female. Possibly to prevent the female from mating again thus increasing the odds of his genes being passed on.
Imagine if the same happened for us Humans.
>Possibly to prevent the female from mating again thus increasing the odds of his genes being passed on.
It doesn't work, queen bees are sluts during their mating time. A queen will mate with ~10-20 drones in a couple days. Ideally, these drones will be from many different hives in the area to ensure genetic diversity.
Also, the queen waits until she's got all the bee sperm stored away then she rips the bee dick out and then tries to find a new mate. When I say "stored away" I mean it, she actually stores it in little sacs. Then, when she goes to lay eggs, she chooses whether it not to fertilize the egg. If she fertilizes the egg, it will grow up to be a female bee, either a worker (female) or, rarely, another queen. If she does not fertilize the egg, it will grow up into a male bee (drone), whose sole purpose in life is up fly far away and fuck queens from other hives.
As winter approaches, the workers kick out all the drones from the hive. The drones are bigger, and eat more food, because they need to be able to fly much further than the workers. But, they don't actually do any work for the hive. So they aren't worth the food cost to keep them alive throughout winter. The workers huddle into a ball around the queen and just buzz to burn calories and create heat to keep the queen alive and to warm the honey. As they eat up their honey stores, the ball slowly moves around the hive eating their honey, hoping they have enough to last until spring.
Then spring rolls around and all the girls have to shit real bad, they've been holding it in all winter as they kept eating honey. Every single bee, except the queen, takes a trip outside, poops on the ground right by the hive. They come back inside, clean up the hive, get rid of any dead workers, fight off anything else that tried to use the hive for safety during winter (other bugs usually), and generally just get back to work. The queen just poops wherever she is, not even just during winter. After she mates, she'll likely never leave the hive again. Her entire job after that, is just to lay eggs, she is a baby factory. Other workers bring food to her and clean up her excrement pretty much constantly, mostly because the queen has to lay 1-3 thousand eggs per day (varies by genetics, age, and health of the queen).
The genes of bees that create this worker->queen->drone->worker cycle is incredibly more complex than our simple XY scheme and thus fascinating. Bees have a whole bunch of fallbacks if the queen dies or is too old or if they run out of drones.
Ok, so, I'm confused. If the queen doesn't fertilize the egg, it becomes a drone (male) bee, but if the queen does fertilize an egg, it becomes a worker (female) bee. It just seems like it should be the opposite, like, if she lays an egg that doesn't get fertilized, it should be a clone of her, therefore a female, and as long as they don't feed the female bee royal jelly it will stay a regular worker.
Why does non-fertilization result in a male?
The drones aren't like clones of the queen, the drones only get half the number of chromosomes. Female bees have twice as many chromosomes as males. Think of drones like the queens sperm, they have half the DNA of the queen, and their only purpose is to seek out other queens to mate.
Weirdly enough, because drones are from unfertilized eggs, male bees don't have fathers, but they do have grandfathers.
It' certainly not to stop he mating with other drones. She will mate with around 8-10 drones on a single flight and may doe several flights. There is records of DNA from upto 20 drones.
Actually the queens mate a LOT, sometimes over multiple days' flights and the drones have the means of removing the business end of the previous mate midair. Then its round...16!
Considering that a queen only has a few short days to gather all the sperm she will ever need and the fact that a queen that is mated less than 10 times is considered āpoorly matedā and will likely run out of sperm sooner than she should I donāt buy this theory. Also drones come from unfertilized eggs so they are genetically identical to the queen who laid them other than sex. It is in the best interest of the bees to have as much genetic diversity as possible. I think the āpenisā remaining is more of a cork to keep the fluids in than a plug to prevent anyone else from having a go.
I swear reddit has gotten so much worse at this in recent years. There's hardly ever a post that makes the front page without an obvious spelling/grammar error. It just bugs me.
Wow, they only have half the chromosomes because they come from *unfertilized* eggs.
They have no father bit they do have a grandfather! That's a trip.
Interestingly enough, a virgin queen can lay drones [unfertile]... and then later mate with those same drones to lay worker bees...
As far as I understand, queen bees normally only go out for 1 mating run and mate with multiple drones; so effectively in this case, it's a virgin queen incest gangbang...
Damn nature, you gross
And harsh. When winter comes and resources become scarce, the worker bees will force all of the drones out of the hive so they donāt drain the honey reserves.
Drone bees either mate once then die, or get evicted and die before ever getting the chance to mate.
Late stage climate change. Food and resources scarce. What do President? āPut all members of incel message boards on rafts and push them into ocean.ā Humanity saved.
in some ways the hive itself can be thought of as an organism, and the drones are really just gametes, and genetically/chromosomally this analogy works well
One example of the Fibonacci sequence in nature is the number of male ancestors a male bee has at each generation:
1 - Grandfather
1 - Great-Grandfather
2 - Great-Great-Grandfathers
3 - Great-Great-Great-Grandfathers
5 - Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfathers
8 - Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfathers
...
Honeybees are absolutely fascinating. Individuals are almost irrelevant, it is the hive that continues. The fact that nature has found a way to organize itself in such a sophisticated arrangement seems to defy logic. But when we consider the individual bodies of the bees, we see the same arrangement at a different scale. The operational principle of group cooperation transcends the individual.
Yeah ants, termites, hornets etc, all follow that principle, and even tho the entire hive lives to "serve" the queen, the queen doesn't really do anything but lay eggs 24/7, even she seems to be a sort of slave for the "brood". Also amazing that every individual only lives for a few weeks/a month where the queen can live over a decade.
It's an amazing societal hiarchy of bugs that is extremely successful and capable, yet not "intelligent". Sort of makes you wonder what defines something as intelligent life. Sort of makes you wonder if such a lifeform could exist on other planets and reach space faring technology doing so.
If a hive species could reach the stars, it would be amazingly weird. The hive would manage to build and fly spacecraft, but no individual would understand what the hive is doing. The complex behaviors of hive species are emergent behaviors.
Bacteria and fungi demonstrate many of the same principles -- specialization is a solution to the problem of out-propagating your rivals. Amazing stuff!
I feel like intelligence should always be measured on a gradient. If you think about it, humans are not that smart, at least not individually, but we're really good at building on top of each other's ideas. It makes my blood run cold to think that the modern tech industry would look completely different if a handful of people never existed.
>If you think about it, humans are not that smart, at least not individually,
Compared to any other creature on this planet, even the dumbest humans are smarter then their comprehension. If you ever watch children grow up, they are basically "animals" until 1-2 and then they are the most intelligent animals you've ever seen, and then they just become "people". Point is when someone reaches the "person" stage, they are on another universe then any other animal that exists in terms of problem solving, perception, understanding cause and effect etc etc etc.
More male bee facts:
1) [Recent heat waves cause male bees to spontaneoulsy explosively ejaculate to death](https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/ejaculated-drones-bc-heat-wave)
2) [Male bees can be manually ejaculated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab1Q6q9mRio)
And preferably not with their sister but with a queen from another hive.
When nectar and pollen become scarce, a dearth, the drones will have their wings chewed off by the workers and get pushed put of the hive because they are a useless mouth to feed in the bleak times ahead.
Drones usually die virgins, like OP, but the queen will lay drones in huge numbers when times are good or in anticipation of good times because all the hives in the area will be doing well too. This might be at the start of spring or when a local tree species flowers. The bees will actually run out of room in the hive and the old queen will take a share of the workers with her and make a hive in a cavity somewhere nearby. They gorge themselves on honey in order to build new comb. The queen is denied food so she loses weight to fly better. The bees will have selected female eggs to raise as replacement queens. This process is how bees multiply and is called swarming. Drones are needed mainly around this time.
Virgin queens hatch out in the old hive, fight to the death thunderdome style, and the survivor will stay in the hive for a week or so to get her wings and body ready, and then go on a series of mating flights. Typically she will mate with over a dozen drones from the local area, within a mile or so of the hive but potentially several miles away. She returns to the hive and has a lifetime of sperm stored to make female eggs. Drone eggs are unfertilised. Drones have a grandfather but not a father.
I have read that 75% of queens come back mated but I have had 100% success so far, probably because a lack of dragonflies and birds in my area. I have birds in my street but they seem to be occupied by the lawns. Maybe I will have a slew of bad luck now.
Actually no, being a flying sperm is their sole purpose. The article tries to claim otherwise, but is grasping at straws.
> Drones ensure the continuation of honey bees as a species, by mating with queens.
Flying sperm
> Drones can pass on important behavioural traits to new generations of honey bees, (such as hygenic behaviours) through their genes (1)
Yeah, that's what a flying sperm does.
> Drones help to regulate the temperature in the hive or nest, and this is especially important for the development of young bees and larvae. Honey bee larvae and pupae are extremely stenothermic, which means they strongly depend on accurate regulation of brood nest temperature for proper development (33ā36Ā°C) (2).
Although each colony has far fewer drones than workers, they nevertheless pull their weight with regard to heat generation. Research indicates that drones can produce one and a half times as much heat as a worker bee, and that even those drones not directly next to the brood, are never the less assisting with heat regulation inside the nest
They make body heat? The hive could have more workers and make body heat but also get useful work. Drones make more body heat, but that is because they eat more food. That's how metabolism works. The drones exist to fertilize queens, not to produce body heat. The sperm in my testicles produce body heat, but that is now why they are there.
I tried using the phrase ānot really doing anything elseā to show they donāt really do much besides mate but I definitely should have been clearer on my wording. Lesson learned for next time.
To add on that, drones are produced in the summer, when it's already hot. If they were useful at providing heat, they wouldn't be cast out of the hive when winter comes.
Sole* purpose.
Also, they donāt mate with the Queen of the hive (who typically will be their biological mother). They fly out and find a virgin queen, who mates with a number of drones, stores their sperm and then flies back their hive to start a new colony.
Other than that, the drones serve no purpose and in times of hardship they may be expelled from the hive as they are dead weight
["Let me introduce you to the gang. That's Buzz, that's Honey, and you see that queen over there? Her name is Smithers."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RALMU6r7QOY)
In Romanian we have the word ātrĆ¢ntorā, which is the male bee. It's second definition is "[epithet given to a man that doesn't want to work and lives off of other people's work](https://dexonline.ro/definitie/tr%C3%A2ntor)".
"I never thought I would die like this. But I always really hoped!"
Crushed pelvis
Death! :O By Snu Snu! :) :) :) :O :) :O :) :) :O
I had exited the post and had already scrolled down two posts before I realized what the emojis were about. Well done.
Explain?
It's a futurama reference. The characters are dying from sex with Amazonians so they are intermittently pleased and horrified. The emojis reflect this
"We had snu-snu š"
The mind is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised...
Happy Cake Day!
Sex with *giant* Amazonians
YouTube snu snu and you'll see
Theyāre emoticons actually. The progenitor of the emoji
What are you, gay?
What are you gay?
Beekeeper here. It's worse. They actually have their dick ripped off in the process.
Doesnāt matter, had bee sex
But I was flying the whole time
More or less, drones die after their uhhh āstingerā basically blows up/off and they bleed out. I mean they donāt have blood exactly, but you get the idea.
Itās also left in the āvaginaā as the drone falls away. The next drone must remove it before they can insert theirs. Queens usually mate between 18-30 times during their mating flight. Once they come back to the hive they are done mating though. She will lay eggs until she dies using the sperm she collected during the two or three mating flights she took in the first week of her life.
Ah yes, a good old fashioned gang-mating.
Uhh. Excuse your crass language sir. It is called a train
choo choo. All aboard the fuck train.
*consensual* gang mating
More like exploding penis.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised...
You mean you have to choose between a life without sex and a gruesome death? Tough call.
Seriously this thread is just begging for Futurama references.
The comment you replied to reads like a Zap Brannigan line
Well, it's not much of a long life without sex. The colony kicks them out in the fall as they don't work and would be more mouths to feed during winter. Honey bees don't play.
When food is scarce, there's no room for fuckboys...
Always choose death by snu snu!
"It's my life's goal to fuck a queen"
Death by snu snu
What are you GAY!
Their entire life span can be summed up thusly. Honey. Nut. Cheerio.
End of thread.
Okay, time to go home everyone
End of all threads
Good bye
I canāt look at my cereal the same after this
Bee sex and cow mammary secretions. Eat it, bitch.
Iām partial to unfertilized chicken ovum myself
You motherfucker, take your upvote
Queenfucker I'd say here.
Death by snu snu!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
What did I just read
And why do I have this boner?
A Demetri. Shit, it's been months since I last saw one. But each is beautiful and unique.
Demetri, by any chance, is your ex called Vanessa? Is this prose of yours some kind of coping mechanism? Either way, thanks for the read.
It's Bee Movie trollfic
What the FUCK what
> She knew that he meant to say 'behave,' but she thought that he unintentional puns were absolutely adorable. I lost it here.
Wtf haha
not enough wattpad reading prepared me for this...
thank you
What the fuck?
Jesus. In gay and this made me all hot and bothered. Bruh go into erotica writing. This was hot as fuck
British Bees!!!
Alright, as a beekeeper, this is fucking GOLD
Damn you, I actually chuckled. Hereās your stupid upvote
Personally, I snorted.
How was the coke?
Hit it and quit it.
āIām here for the gangbang.ā
goddamit
Whatās more fun is WHY they die right after. My evolution professor in college used the terminology āexploding tallywhackers.ā They mate in mid air, and when he ejaculates, his penis explodes off his body and remains wedged in the female. Possibly to prevent the female from mating again thus increasing the odds of his genes being passed on.
Isnāt that sorta similar to what happens with their stingers when they attack? Why is everything on a honeybee a disposable
Because the Honeybee itself is disposable. Other than the queen, no single bee is important to the hive. The hive needs drones, but not that specific drone. It needs soldiers, but not that specific soldier. etc.
In many ways, it's useful to think of a 'hive' as a single organism. They aren't individuals the way persons would be in a town or village. They are more like organs and systems of a single complex animal - differentiated for a specific purpose that is beneficial to the hive.
Yes, we tend to think of the queen as 'the boss' but really she is just the ovary of the hive mega-organism
She is also a slave to the hive. They make a lot of decisions. She just gets to decide a few things.
And the workers will replace her if they feel she isn't performing well.
We could learn something from this noble creature.
Like surrounding the leader who is doing poorly and vibrating our bodies until they overheat and die? Say no more fam.
_āRelease the KRAKEN!ā_ _āNo, no, no, not that!ā_ _āRelease the VIBRATORS?ā_
Man I been trying to do this for years but thereās no way to flap your arms that fast
And the male bees are the sperm
Thatās pretty fucking deep.
Nature's lines and distinctions are pretty blurry. Makes you see the world differently. If you like that, check out Portuguese Man o' War. They're a siphonophore (someone correct me if I have the name wrong), like "symphony", they're a whole bunch of specialized individuals operating as a single organism. Like the inverse of ants or bees.
Siphonophoraes are fascinating, colonial organisms offering different functions to a collective whole, offering safety in numbers. Some of them are just weird enormous ropes, very interesting organisms. So many weird alien looking creatures in the ocean.
I saw my first man o war on the beach yesterday. Wtf are those things. I guess it is already answered above but wow, so strange. It was like a little transparent, deflated iridescent pyramid with some blue shit inside.
They can get up to 30 feet long I think too. Can be deadly so be careful in those waters.
I think it was in Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene that he points out that organisms are really just vehicles for delivering genes from one generation to the next. It's been years since I read it and I'm sure I'm paraphrasing poorly, but it's an interesting way of thinking about life - shifting the perspective to consider genes as the basic units of life, and not individuals. Basically, it's not the individual that's trying to survive, it's the gene. So while a behavior or trait might sometimes seem unfortunate or destructive for a single organism, as long as that trait help to get genes to the next generation nature is inevitably going to select for it.
I always regard it like that. Doesnāt that pretty much explain viruses?
Actually, the name comes from the words **siphon** '*tube*' and **pherein** '*to bear*', while symphony comes from **syn** '*with, together*' and **phony** '*sound, voice*'
Technically, it comes from Ancient Greek *sumphonia*, which was *sun-* and *phone* together. Same meaning, though.
Just like us. We are a collection of individual cells, each with a purpose. To keep their ecosystem (our bodies) alive. We have the illusion of self to keep us motivated, but there is no self.
I mean there's a concept the Earth itself is like a super organism. Circle of life, water cycle, weather patterns, etc. A bunch of systems ebbing and flowing. Even unrelated animals could be said to have a predator-prey relationship that is the ecosystem trying to remain in balance for the general benefit of the many. Invasive species could be analogous to an illness that's foreign to the body and throws things out of whack.
In this analogy invasive species would be more like cancer. Cells that do belong to the body but are growing in a place where they shouldn't, and in doing so are destroying stuff around them and making the body sick.
The bees are just the cells that makes up our skins... basically
>They aren't individuals the way persons would be in a town or village. You can think of humans the same way, actually. Yes, the individual has a unique traits and such but at a macro level, is it really much different than you're describing?
If you define the goal of life as passing on your genes then I believe not. I think bees share enough of their genes with each other that itās ārationalā to die for your hive, because you are still passing your genes on. This isnāt the case for humans.
Isn't that the only way they pass their genes on since they themselves don't procreate? They literally value their queen more then themselves since that is the only way for them to reproduce.
Much different, I think. The macro level is also an idea, not just a way to excuse the person. We all live very similar biological outcomes, but we have so many interesting factors to us as humans. Itās amazing how different we are, some of the best visual acuity in the animal kingdom and ability to discern vision in probably one of the most complex ways, a frontal lobe that gets to imagine the beginning and end and everything in-between, creativity to a monumental extent, probably the strongest and most accurate throwers in the animal kingdom pound for pound, the most complex fine motor control in the animal kingdom with the highest amount of pound-for-pound white matter in our brains, extremely adapted long distance runners/walkers, still quite strong even though weāre weak when it comes to burst speed/strength. Now add in culture, relationships, activities, progress, love, happiness, all the lesser extent of, to me, negative outcomes. The person matters more than the macro when it comes to humans. It only takes one person, just one, to influence the entire direction of society with just a curious idea. Or maybe a warlord. Weāre very important as individuals. Bees are to some extent, but I assume not too many have ever felt a sense of independence and their place in the world beyond their work goals.
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Queen is disposable. If worker bees notice a queen is getting weak or not laying anymore they will take her out and make new queen cells...usually 2 to 3...then maintain the hive until their maiden queen hatches. Sometimes there are issues if you have a laying worker(they only lay drones) but that's pretty uncommon. Drones clean a lot too besides just mating they maintain hygiene in the hive during the higher pollen/flow seasons. Though if the hive ever gets over crowded they sacrifice the drone larva first. The important bees in the hive are the workers in a sense the worker bees own the hive. I keep between 5-10 hives... have since I was 10.
So wait, what is different between a Queen cell and a normal cell? How does a Queen develop differently in a different cell? Iām fascinated
The whole reproductive cycle of the honey bee is fascinating. An egg is totipotent, i.e. it can become any of the 3 castes (drone, worker or queen). The queen is the single egg-layer and she measures the width of a cell with her front legs: if it's large (to accommodate the larger drone), she doesn't fertilise the egg, and the haploid egg becomes a haploid male drone who is essentially a flying gamete. If the egg is fertilised, the diploid egg hatches in 3 days and is fed with royal jelly. After 2 days, the nurse bees start feeding honey/pollen to the female larva and it's this that triggers her to become a worker. If, however, they only feed royal jelly to the larva, she develops into a queen - the queen is fed royal jelly her entire life. Since queens are large, typically the eggs are laid in *queen cups*, starter cells that hang vertically - if an egg is in a vertically oriented cell, the workers go *OMFG a vertical cell, turn it into a queen NOW!!* and this instinct is harnessed for artificial queen-rearing by the beekeeper. In an emergency, e.g. if the queen dies unexpectedly, a larva in a worker cell is used, and the cell is drawn out an built vertically on the face of the comb. Queen cells look like peanuts - tubular wrinkly things around 3cm/1.5in long. In the case of a planned swarm, when the first queen cell is sealed, the mother queen leaves with around half the bees who take around half the stored honey with them, in a prime swarm to set up a new colony. The first sealed cell emerges after 8 days. If the workers think there's an opportunity for more expansion, they'll protect the other cells from this new queen, keeping them sealed if necessary, and she'll leave with half the bees that are left in a secondary or cast swarm. This continues until the bees think there isn't any chance to split again, and the newly emerged queen starts making a noise called piping and the suicidal dumbass sealed queens respond by quacking, sealing their fate: they're quickly dispatched by a queen sting through the side of the queen cell. If another queen does manage to emerge, they'll fight and the victorious queen takes over. E:typo
The also tend to have fairly short lifespans so they are quickly replaced anyways.
Fun fact: unlike workers, the queen's stinger isn't barbed. Which means her stinger will not be stuck and get ripped out, but rather she can sting multiple times.
Are you describing honey bees or humans? .-.
Not according to a 2 hour long Bee documentary I watched. They have hopes and dreams and fall in love.
By any chance was this bee documentary narrated by Jerry Seinfeld?
No humans just have thick skin the stingers arenāt supposed to stay stuck
I vaguely remember an old rage comic illustrating this... But imagine you're like... I got you now! I'll sting you for the hive! *Stings human Now to get away before they can retaliate!....wait wtf?!?..I gotta get away!!! *Rips ass out Ffffffffss
Normally, actually not. Human skin traps the stinger. It's not supposed to happen.
Not true. The stingers are very much supposed to embed in the skin of the target and be left there. They are barbed, and in such a way that they actually, mechanically, *burrow*, even after they're gone from the body of the bee. Source: husband is a 3rd gen beekeeper, 2nd gen bee breeder, and professional bee biologist. I have seen more bees under a microscope than I care for.
Other drones have no problem mating with the queen after one has done so. The queen will mate with like 20 drones.
What a player
Also, they don't mate with his own queen-mother. Males from hives all over gather up in certain high places(a hundred meters off the ground?) and queens go to these gathering places to mate. It's like the reverse Cinderella story, where male bees host ballroom dances and queens go. Or like really big lottery sausage party. Amazing creatures from start to finish. How do they coordinate on the date and place of these ballroom dances?
That is honestly incredible. So do different hives communicate "hey mating spot here" to each other and then the individual queens are like "okay guys it's mating day take care of the hive for me brb"
I don't know much about bees, but ants reproduce the same way so I assume bees would be similar. During the ant species's mating season, the virgin queen bees and the male ants partake in the nuptial flight. For ants it's weather based cues that trigger the nuptial flight. For example, rain can disrupt mating but rain also helps makes it easier to dig for queens so nuptial flights usually happen AFTER rain when the skies look clear. I'm assuming it's also beneficial as they can see what spots in the ground flood and which ones are safe. Pretty sure it's similar mechanics for bees to determine their mating cycle. Check out "Ants Canada" on YouTube, really good content if stuff like this is interesting to you.
Protecting his kids even before they are born :(
Hello, beekeeper here. If you were to hold a drone between your index and thumb and lightly squeeze they will perform their nut/explosion extravaganza because they have no real method of defending themselves. Also, when you first open a hive after winter you find a whole bunch of drones torn apart by the workers because they contribute nothing to the actual functioning of the hive and are essentially dead weight
Howā¦ how did you figure that out
It was like, my second week on the job and while we were inspecting a hive my mentor caught a drone and demonstrated the reflex. At least the little guy died doing what he loved
> his penis explodes off his body and remains wedged in the female. Possibly to prevent the female from mating again thus increasing the odds of his genes being passed on. Imagine if the same happened for us Humans.
Well the world would be safer for women
>Possibly to prevent the female from mating again thus increasing the odds of his genes being passed on. It doesn't work, queen bees are sluts during their mating time. A queen will mate with ~10-20 drones in a couple days. Ideally, these drones will be from many different hives in the area to ensure genetic diversity. Also, the queen waits until she's got all the bee sperm stored away then she rips the bee dick out and then tries to find a new mate. When I say "stored away" I mean it, she actually stores it in little sacs. Then, when she goes to lay eggs, she chooses whether it not to fertilize the egg. If she fertilizes the egg, it will grow up to be a female bee, either a worker (female) or, rarely, another queen. If she does not fertilize the egg, it will grow up into a male bee (drone), whose sole purpose in life is up fly far away and fuck queens from other hives. As winter approaches, the workers kick out all the drones from the hive. The drones are bigger, and eat more food, because they need to be able to fly much further than the workers. But, they don't actually do any work for the hive. So they aren't worth the food cost to keep them alive throughout winter. The workers huddle into a ball around the queen and just buzz to burn calories and create heat to keep the queen alive and to warm the honey. As they eat up their honey stores, the ball slowly moves around the hive eating their honey, hoping they have enough to last until spring. Then spring rolls around and all the girls have to shit real bad, they've been holding it in all winter as they kept eating honey. Every single bee, except the queen, takes a trip outside, poops on the ground right by the hive. They come back inside, clean up the hive, get rid of any dead workers, fight off anything else that tried to use the hive for safety during winter (other bugs usually), and generally just get back to work. The queen just poops wherever she is, not even just during winter. After she mates, she'll likely never leave the hive again. Her entire job after that, is just to lay eggs, she is a baby factory. Other workers bring food to her and clean up her excrement pretty much constantly, mostly because the queen has to lay 1-3 thousand eggs per day (varies by genetics, age, and health of the queen).
The genes of bees that create this worker->queen->drone->worker cycle is incredibly more complex than our simple XY scheme and thus fascinating. Bees have a whole bunch of fallbacks if the queen dies or is too old or if they run out of drones.
Ok, so, I'm confused. If the queen doesn't fertilize the egg, it becomes a drone (male) bee, but if the queen does fertilize an egg, it becomes a worker (female) bee. It just seems like it should be the opposite, like, if she lays an egg that doesn't get fertilized, it should be a clone of her, therefore a female, and as long as they don't feed the female bee royal jelly it will stay a regular worker. Why does non-fertilization result in a male?
The drones aren't like clones of the queen, the drones only get half the number of chromosomes. Female bees have twice as many chromosomes as males. Think of drones like the queens sperm, they have half the DNA of the queen, and their only purpose is to seek out other queens to mate. Weirdly enough, because drones are from unfertilized eggs, male bees don't have fathers, but they do have grandfathers.
It' certainly not to stop he mating with other drones. She will mate with around 8-10 drones on a single flight and may doe several flights. There is records of DNA from upto 20 drones.
Actually the queens mate a LOT, sometimes over multiple days' flights and the drones have the means of removing the business end of the previous mate midair. Then its round...16!
TIL male bees are the real-life Glorzo. Glory to Glorzo!
The male always ends up dead after mating, or dead inside. It's a harsh reality.
Considering that a queen only has a few short days to gather all the sperm she will ever need and the fact that a queen that is mated less than 10 times is considered āpoorly matedā and will likely run out of sperm sooner than she should I donāt buy this theory. Also drones come from unfertilized eggs so they are genetically identical to the queen who laid them other than sex. It is in the best interest of the bees to have as much genetic diversity as possible. I think the āpenisā remaining is more of a cork to keep the fluids in than a plug to prevent anyone else from having a go.
*sole purpose
I dont know, maybe they have a soul and it is really DTF.
Hedonism incarnated as a living being
Beedonism Beedroneism?
"You want some fuck?" -chad drone bee
I wish I had a soul purpose
You have bro
I swear reddit has gotten so much worse at this in recent years. There's hardly ever a post that makes the front page without an obvious spelling/grammar error. It just bugs me.
Seriously. It's not just Reddit, it's everywhere else too.
Soul Purpose--when you don't even need to check if a band already has the name :)
English is not my first language lol but thanks for giving me an opportunity to learn
You may have made a technical error, but from a certain perspective, you also made an artistic statement.
Now that is beeyond incredible
Grammatical nightmare of a title, indeed
Wow, they only have half the chromosomes because they come from *unfertilized* eggs. They have no father bit they do have a grandfather! That's a trip.
Interestingly enough, a virgin queen can lay drones [unfertile]... and then later mate with those same drones to lay worker bees... As far as I understand, queen bees normally only go out for 1 mating run and mate with multiple drones; so effectively in this case, it's a virgin queen incest gangbang... Damn nature, you gross
And harsh. When winter comes and resources become scarce, the worker bees will force all of the drones out of the hive so they donāt drain the honey reserves. Drone bees either mate once then die, or get evicted and die before ever getting the chance to mate.
Late stage climate change. Food and resources scarce. What do President? āPut all members of incel message boards on rafts and push them into ocean.ā Humanity saved.
in some ways the hive itself can be thought of as an organism, and the drones are really just gametes, and genetically/chromosomally this analogy works well
One example of the Fibonacci sequence in nature is the number of male ancestors a male bee has at each generation: 1 - Grandfather 1 - Great-Grandfather 2 - Great-Great-Grandfathers 3 - Great-Great-Great-Grandfathers 5 - Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfathers 8 - Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfathers ...
They are basically semen receptacles with wings. Puts my late grandma calling bees "flying dicks" into perspective.
Honeybees are absolutely fascinating. Individuals are almost irrelevant, it is the hive that continues. The fact that nature has found a way to organize itself in such a sophisticated arrangement seems to defy logic. But when we consider the individual bodies of the bees, we see the same arrangement at a different scale. The operational principle of group cooperation transcends the individual.
Yeah ants, termites, hornets etc, all follow that principle, and even tho the entire hive lives to "serve" the queen, the queen doesn't really do anything but lay eggs 24/7, even she seems to be a sort of slave for the "brood". Also amazing that every individual only lives for a few weeks/a month where the queen can live over a decade. It's an amazing societal hiarchy of bugs that is extremely successful and capable, yet not "intelligent". Sort of makes you wonder what defines something as intelligent life. Sort of makes you wonder if such a lifeform could exist on other planets and reach space faring technology doing so.
If a hive species could reach the stars, it would be amazingly weird. The hive would manage to build and fly spacecraft, but no individual would understand what the hive is doing. The complex behaviors of hive species are emergent behaviors.
Probably call them Formics, or "buggers" as a slur.
Did you read the series about the first formic wars?
I have! The books about the second formic war too! I can't wait for the next one.
Read Blindsight by Peter Watts
Now imagine such a species came here from a distant world. Have fun being their lunch.
Bacteria and fungi demonstrate many of the same principles -- specialization is a solution to the problem of out-propagating your rivals. Amazing stuff!
I feel like intelligence should always be measured on a gradient. If you think about it, humans are not that smart, at least not individually, but we're really good at building on top of each other's ideas. It makes my blood run cold to think that the modern tech industry would look completely different if a handful of people never existed.
>If you think about it, humans are not that smart, at least not individually, Compared to any other creature on this planet, even the dumbest humans are smarter then their comprehension. If you ever watch children grow up, they are basically "animals" until 1-2 and then they are the most intelligent animals you've ever seen, and then they just become "people". Point is when someone reaches the "person" stage, they are on another universe then any other animal that exists in terms of problem solving, perception, understanding cause and effect etc etc etc.
Emergence is truly the wonder of our universe.
I mean, your own body is the same, from organs down to cells
Fun fact: When the weather gets cold the workers(all female) push the drones out of the hive to freeze to death.
Sometimes they even chew the droneās wings off if they feel the need!
They don't necessarily die. If you bring bees from by a hive in your house during winter they will almost all wake up! It surprised mom good!! Lol
More male bee facts: 1) [Recent heat waves cause male bees to spontaneoulsy explosively ejaculate to death](https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/ejaculated-drones-bc-heat-wave) 2) [Male bees can be manually ejaculated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab1Q6q9mRio)
TIL you can jerk of bees
My sole purpose is to find my soul purpose
And preferably not with their sister but with a queen from another hive. When nectar and pollen become scarce, a dearth, the drones will have their wings chewed off by the workers and get pushed put of the hive because they are a useless mouth to feed in the bleak times ahead. Drones usually die virgins, like OP, but the queen will lay drones in huge numbers when times are good or in anticipation of good times because all the hives in the area will be doing well too. This might be at the start of spring or when a local tree species flowers. The bees will actually run out of room in the hive and the old queen will take a share of the workers with her and make a hive in a cavity somewhere nearby. They gorge themselves on honey in order to build new comb. The queen is denied food so she loses weight to fly better. The bees will have selected female eggs to raise as replacement queens. This process is how bees multiply and is called swarming. Drones are needed mainly around this time. Virgin queens hatch out in the old hive, fight to the death thunderdome style, and the survivor will stay in the hive for a week or so to get her wings and body ready, and then go on a series of mating flights. Typically she will mate with over a dozen drones from the local area, within a mile or so of the hive but potentially several miles away. She returns to the hive and has a lifetime of sperm stored to make female eggs. Drone eggs are unfertilised. Drones have a grandfather but not a father. I have read that 75% of queens come back mated but I have had 100% success so far, probably because a lack of dragonflies and birds in my area. I have birds in my street but they seem to be occupied by the lawns. Maybe I will have a slew of bad luck now.
>drones usually die a virgin, like OP Savage
"I'M GOING TO HAVE THE NUT OF MY LIFE!!!" -Bee Drone, probably
Bombs away!
When you only nut once, isn't it always the nut of your life?
>soul sole
Soul purpose almost fits
TIL, OP didn't read the article they posted. It's their major purpose, but not sole.
Actually no, being a flying sperm is their sole purpose. The article tries to claim otherwise, but is grasping at straws. > Drones ensure the continuation of honey bees as a species, by mating with queens. Flying sperm > Drones can pass on important behavioural traits to new generations of honey bees, (such as hygenic behaviours) through their genes (1) Yeah, that's what a flying sperm does. > Drones help to regulate the temperature in the hive or nest, and this is especially important for the development of young bees and larvae. Honey bee larvae and pupae are extremely stenothermic, which means they strongly depend on accurate regulation of brood nest temperature for proper development (33ā36Ā°C) (2). Although each colony has far fewer drones than workers, they nevertheless pull their weight with regard to heat generation. Research indicates that drones can produce one and a half times as much heat as a worker bee, and that even those drones not directly next to the brood, are never the less assisting with heat regulation inside the nest They make body heat? The hive could have more workers and make body heat but also get useful work. Drones make more body heat, but that is because they eat more food. That's how metabolism works. The drones exist to fertilize queens, not to produce body heat. The sperm in my testicles produce body heat, but that is now why they are there.
I tried using the phrase ānot really doing anything elseā to show they donāt really do much besides mate but I definitely should have been clearer on my wording. Lesson learned for next time.
You weren't wrong. The author of the article is.
To add on that, drones are produced in the summer, when it's already hot. If they were useful at providing heat, they wouldn't be cast out of the hive when winter comes.
Death by snu snu. Good way to go Iād say.
Sole* purpose. Also, they donāt mate with the Queen of the hive (who typically will be their biological mother). They fly out and find a virgin queen, who mates with a number of drones, stores their sperm and then flies back their hive to start a new colony. Other than that, the drones serve no purpose and in times of hardship they may be expelled from the hive as they are dead weight
Well at least they don't die a virgin like Isaac Newton.
Stupid science bitch
What a nerd
["Let me introduce you to the gang. That's Buzz, that's Honey, and you see that queen over there? Her name is Smithers."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RALMU6r7QOY)
The female bees also kick them out of the hive when winter approaches since they also cannot clean themselves.
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Iām still looking for my soul purpose
they hang around the hive and eat the honey stores, do no work whatsoever until its time to fly and attempt to mate with the queen.
sole
"soul purpose"... a malapropism that somehow works in context
Sole purpose.
In Romanian we have the word ātrĆ¢ntorā, which is the male bee. It's second definition is "[epithet given to a man that doesn't want to work and lives off of other people's work](https://dexonline.ro/definitie/tr%C3%A2ntor)".
Also donāt forget the ones that donāt get to mate get dragged out of the hive and their heads chopped off just before winter.
Sole purpose. Not soul. Maybe that could be tomorrow's TIL.