Queen Bee Has Sperm, So There's Really No Need for 'King Bee'

Have you ever thought if there is a 'King Bee' in wildlife? We all know that the Queen bee is the most important insect in a colony of bees. Without it, the colony will collapse and disappear.

But, interestingly, queen bees do not necessarily need king bees, in order to survive. In fact, men bees (or drone bees) that will mate with the queen bee immediately die after the mating period. Another interesting fact is that queen bees store millions of sperm, that they don't need men afterwards.

Is there a 'King Bee'

Queen Bee Produces Own Sperm, So There's No Need for 'King Bee'

(Photo : Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Worker bees surround a queen, who is marked with a yellow spot on her back, in the colony of beekeper Reiner Gabriel in the garden of his home near Berlin on April 25, 2013 in Blankenfelde, Germany. Local beekeepers claim their yearly loss rates within their bee populations has gone from an average of 10% per year to 30% per year over the last 10 years, though they are unsure whether the cause lies with a mite and a virus it might be spreading or with the increased use of certain pesticides by local farmers. According to a recent report prepared by Greenpeace seven pesticides currently in use in Europe present a real danger to bees. Bees are essential in nature in pollenating a wide variety of plants and trees.

There's no such thing as 'king bee' in the wildlife. A honeybee queen is the single most important bee in a colony, as she produces the population in a colony.

Studies show that the mating between queen bee and its drone bees are quite complicated. As explained via Orkin page, when a virgin queen bee flies to thousands of male bees, the drone bees will immediately mount the queen and insert his 'endophallus.'

Once the ejaculation starts, the endophallus will be ripped from the drone bee's body. After mating, the drone bee will die immediately.

Male honey bees are only capable to mate within seven to 10 times before it dies from mating. When the queen honeybee is done in its mating flight, she will store all the sperm from all the mating periods-- this results to over 100 million sperms found inside her body.

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What does 'Queen failure' means in a bee colony

(Photo : Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Beekeeper and Chairman of The London Beekeepers Association John Chapple installs a new bee hive on an urban rooftop garden in Islington on July 1, 2009 in London, England. The Queen bee can be seen with a green dot on her back. The UK has an estimated 274,000 bee colonies producing an average of 6000 tonnes of honey per year. An estimated 44,000 beekeepers manage these hives with each one containing around 20,000 bees. It is estimated that honeybee numbers in the UK have fallen between ten and 15 per cent in the last two years.

Since the queen bee collects all the sperm to be used to reproduce, it needs to perform its duties well in order for the colony to stay surviving.

Alison McAfee, first author of the study and a bee researcher at North Carolina State University via Scientific American, warns that "honeybees are responsible for around between $16 billion and $20 billion worth of economic contribution to agriculture."

This means, if the queen bee decided to not reproduce or so-called 'queen failure', the colony of bees will soon plummet its population.

Once this happens, this could be a problem in nature and in the world.