There are always some strange phenomena in the animal kingdom, especially in breeding, there is loyal monogamy, and both sides perform their duties in life, such as penguins, fathers watching children, and mothers going out to sea to fish. There is also polygamy, such as the lion herd, which is composed of multiple lionesses and a male lion, and the mother has to hunt with her baby.
As a result, many times people will fight for female animals, believing that reproduction in the biological world is unfair to female animals. But in the insect world, the status of females seems to be particularly high, such as queens, queen bees, etc., perhaps because they bear the responsibility of reproducing and growing the group, they are the core existence of the group.
In the bee group, not only is the "polygamy" practiced, but the male bee will die after mating with the queen bee, which can be said to be the "dew love" that pays for it. Despite the danger, the male bees will still rush to the queen bee in spite of themselves, and what trick did the queen use to make these male bees willing to die for it? So let's explore the mysterious world of bees.
Usually, when we see bees, we will avoid them, mainly for fear that they will stab us with needles in the tail. In many places, residents found horse honeycombs in trees or outside the corridors of their homes, and they also needed to dial 120 to request the fire brigade to deal with it, so although the single bee was inconspicuous, the bees as social insects were still very scary if they acted in groups. Bees are social insects that live in groups, and the individuals we see are generally out to collect honey or hunt, and they will return to their nests after the hunt is complete.
There are also many types of bees, such as Chinese bees, Italian bees, European black bees, etc., taking China's indigenous Chinese bees as an example, their body size is relatively small, the body color is black or brownish red, not the bright yellow in our common pictures.
The length of the bees also varies from one to another, with the longest being the queen bee, 17.55 mm, with dark yellow villi on its body. The male is the second with a length of about 12.55mm. The shortest is the worker bee, which is less than 11mm. From the difference in size, we can see that they are in different positions, and the queen bee is naturally the only queen in the bee kingdom, admired by the male bees and cared for by the worker bees. Worker bees are industrious "workers", just like the worker ants in the ant colony.
Although bees can make a "buzzing" sound, but in fact, their communication methods have another way, before everyone may have understood the communication methods of ants, they have no vision, relying on touch, friction to communicate. Because the bees are in flight most of the time, they cannot be touched frequently, and the eyesight of the bees is still very good. So they release pheromones through their own glands during flight, and then other bees receive this pheromone and talk to each other. However, the sound of vibrating wings is sometimes used. For example, after the queen bee flies out of the nest, she will use this method to summon other bees to fly to it.
Although it is very dangerous to be bitten by bees, the honey produced by bees, royal jelly, etc. is one of the drinks that humans like, which not only contains rich elements, but also tastes sweet and nourishing, satisfying people's desire for sweets.
As mentioned earlier, bees are social insects that live in society, so there is a very clear hierarchy within them. The core is, of course, the queen bee, also known as the "queen bee".
A queen bee is a fully developed female bee with reproductive organs, developed from a fertilized egg. Usually there is only 1 bee colony per colony. The body is 1/3 longer than the worker bee, the abdomen is longer, there are stinging needles at the end, there are no wax glands under the abdomen, and the wings cover only half of the abdomen.
The hive is often jokingly referred to as the daughter country because worker bees are also females, but their reproductive organs are not fully developed, so they can only go out to collect food and serve the queen bee to lay eggs.
Because the queen bee has an important influence on the bee colony, if the queen dies, the colony will be in a state of grumpy collapse until a new queen appears. After leaving the house, the new queen will kill other females whose reproductive organs are fully developed, because the queen can only have one.
The virgin queen bee is a queen bee that has not yet been matched with the male bee, and they will generally go out of the nest after getting familiar with the environment and test flying several times, and then carry out the breeding behavior of marriage and flight. When it was finished, it went from being a naïve bride to a mother of a swarm, and began to lay eggs fed by worker bees.
Because there is only one chance to marry once in a lifetime, the queen bee will store the sperm obtained by mating in her seminal sac for later egg laying, and the queen will not fly out of the hive after starting to lay eggs.
The enlargement of the queen bee means that it may only take three days to start laying eggs, laying more than 2,000 eggs per day, and the reproductive ability is extremely strong. And we all know that bees' nests have neat holes, and they each live in their own holes. Therefore, when the queen bee lays eggs, it will also choose holes of different sizes, and the next queen bee will be born on the largest royal platform.
The life span of the queen bee is also much longer than that of other bees, generally 3 to 4 years, and the longer life span can live for about 7 years, but her reproductive ability will decline with age, and if the queen bee's reproductive ability declines, then the fate of the entire colony will be affected. Although some worker bees can also lay eggs, but the eggs laid can only hatch male bees, can not hatch female bees, no female bees means that the largest labor force in the bee colony has been lost, so the bee colony will go to extinction.
Insects mate only to reproduce and do not develop feelings for each other like humans, a behavior that is entirely driven by physiology. The queen bee is also, it will only have one chance to fly out of the nest and mate with the male bee in this life, which may also be its closest to the moment of "love", just a few minutes later, the queen bee who flew back to the nest ended the first wedding flight, and directly became a "widow", why? Next, let's take a look at this romantic wedding.
The queen bee's wedding flight is usually in the afternoon, in a sunny condition. During the wedding flight, the entire colony will stop working, watch the queen mate and wait for the queen to complete the mating to guide it. After flying out of the nest, the virgin queen emits a pheromone, which is mainly composed of three acids and two other compounds, and this fragrance attracts male bees to gather around it.
In order to avoid the tragedy of "inbreeding", the flight distance of the virgin queen bee is generally relatively far, at least 2 kilometers away from the hive, and the farthest can reach about 15 kilometers. The total length of the wedding flight is 5 to 30 minutes, during which the virgin queen will mate with multiple male bees, around 5 to 12.
The total number of male bees attracted is large, but only a few can cross with the queen bee, because the height of the queen's flight and the speed of circling are still very large, and the male bees with poor physical fitness can either not catch up with the queen in the process, or are squeezed by other male bees.
However, the male bee that mates with the queen bee only has a short "love", because after the tail, the queen will contract its tail abdomen, leaving the male bee's junction organs and seminal vesicle glands in its reproductive cavity, at which time the male bee that has been pulled out of the mating device will fall to the ground, become the feast of the ants, and die immediately.
Marriage flying is the process of the virgin queen bee transforming from a young girl to a mother, after the wedding flight is completed, it will fly back to the nest, under the guidance of the worker bee's pheromone to return to the royal platform, then the worker bee will check whether the queen bee mating is successful, and then pull off the male bee mating device clamped behind its tail and feed it royal jelly. About 6 million sperm are stored in the queen bee for spawning over the next 3 to 5 years. It needs to be noted here that in fact, the queen bee that does not fly in marriage can also lay eggs, it has the characteristics of "solitary reproduction", but this unfertilized egg can only hatch male bees, and cannot grow the worker bee population.
Through the detailed explanation of the marriage flight above, everyone has a certain understanding of the inevitable death of male bees after mating. And the death of the male bee is already doomed. Even male bees that do not mate do not live long and cannot escape death.
Males are smaller than queen bees, but they are highly capable of flying and agile. In addition, their reproductive organs are fully mature, probably all of them use nutrients here, so the upper jaw and glands are not fully developed, and even the sting needles are lost. Yes, the stinging needle is the poisonous needle that we usually fear the most, and the bee will insert this organ into the animal when it bites the animal.
There are barbs on the stingers, so sticking in and pulling them out may drag the bee's internal organs out, causing it to die with the enemy, but this is also an important self-defense weapon for bees, but unfortunately the male bees do not even have this organ. It seems to have been born to mate with the queen bee, so it doesn't have the organs to collect pollen and store nectar like the worker bees, nor does it have weapons to attack other creatures. Spend all day in the swarm "idle", waiting for the virgin queen bee to mature and mate with her.
They do not have the ability to collect food, but they are also very able to eat, and the amount of food is about five times that of the worker bees. As mentioned earlier, due to the evolution of reproductive organs, their glands and palates have also degenerated, and the degradation of the palate has caused the male bees to lose the ability to eat independently and need to rely on the feeding of worker bees. So when the nectar can be collected, and the queen does not need the time to mate, the worker bee will drive the male bee out of the hive, although the male bee escaped the catastrophe of mating a few months ago, but also can not escape the result of being frozen and starving outside the hive.
Therefore, the death of the male bee is inevitable, in short, the swarm is absolutely "not idle", each bee has its own responsibility and role, when you do not have the ability to contribute, you will be ruthlessly abandoned.
The reproductive characteristics of this organism are screened out by nature, so whether it is the queen bee's pheromone attraction or the male bee's only "mission" in life, it is to prolong the survival of the colony. It's not that the male bee doesn't know that he will be unplugged by the queen after mating, but at least completing the mating behavior is equivalent to not living up to his own evolution, which is probably the only meaning of the existence of the male wasp!