Posts tagged queen bees
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Promiscuous Queens Make Healthy Hives
A reputation for chastity may have worked for Elizabeth I of England, but queen bees who start their reign with a royal orgy end up with healthier hives.
When queens mate with multiple males their hives end up with greater genetic diversity and more robust communities of symbiotic bacteria living in the bee’s guts. Heather Mattila, an ecologist at Wellesley College, found significantly more gut bacteria in bees from hives where the queens partnered with multiple males than in more sexually deprived hives.
