Yaaaarg!

Male honeybees are called drones. They don’t collect nectar, pollinate flowers, make honey, or build wax combs. That’s women’s work. While in the hive, a drone spends his time begging food off his sisters, pestering them until they regurgitate honey into his waiting jaws.

Outside of the hive, he meets up with his brothers and drones from other hives. The boys hang out in large clusters, waiting and hoping that a virgin queen will pass by so they can get some action.

Unfortunately for these bachelors, getting lucky is fatal. A drone’s penis is kept inside of his abdomen until he forcibly extrudes it, rupturing his abdomen and internal organs in the process. After his one shining moment, the drone’s time is up and he’ll die a slow death. Chaste drones can live a bit longer. They can keep mooching off of their sisters until winter rolls around, at which time they’ll be kicked out of the hive to starve or freeze to death.

If the queen bee dies and there is no successor to the throne, some of the workers will become reproductively active and begin laying eggs. But there won’t be a new queen among the peasant-born larvae. The workers are all virgins, and can only lay unfertilized, male eggs. These virgin-born messiahs will be the last hope of the dying colony. With luck, the hive’s genes will persist in the daughters of other queens, fathered by their bastard sons.