Discoveries

March 01, 2023

The Queen’s Gambit!

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Royal usurpation can be a nasty business. Bee kingdoms are no exception.

Scientists have discovered that wild, nest-searching bumblebee queens face immediate death once they try to claim commercial hives as their own kingdom, Live Science reported.

In their paper, a research team initially set up a number of commercial-style hives to study how the common eastern bumblebees – or Bombus impatiens – pollinate crops.

Coincidentally, they noticed a number of dead wild queen bees at the entrance of each hive, including members of the closely related “confusing bumblebee” – or B. perplexus.

The team explained that the foreign queens were attracted to the hives because of their bright colors and would then attempt to oust the ruling monarchs. They noted that wild B. impatiens queens engaged in usurpation, a natural behavior in which a queen without a nest takes over the domain of another royal for a potential advantage, according to the Cornell Chronicle.

But once they got in, the invading queens were swarmed by workers that showed no mercy.

While this sounds like a royal drama, the continuous regicide shows another instance of how human activity can impact bees: The researchers worry that the loss of wild queens could lead to an overall decline in local bee populations in areas around commercial hives.

To prevent this, they created a device that physically blocks wild queens from entering these hives and getting massacred by their would-be subjects.

The researchers said that these “queen excluders” were 100 percent effective at keeping wild queens out but without compromising the hive’s efficiency. The team believes that these devices should be rolled out to commercial growers who invest in the bees to help pollinate their crops.

This story originally appeared in the March 01, 2023 newsletter, Nintendo and Synagogues.