Since lots of bees successfully live without a queen, what is it that queens provide for the bee species that do have them?

Insects tend to avoid winters by going into ... If anything threatens the queen’s life while diapausing, it means the end of a colony. Given the global decline of bumblebee populations worldwide ...

In the course of her lifetime, a worker bee will produce ... tears through the insect's exoskeleton. Nurtured with food bearing a slightly higher sugar content, queen bees are slightly larger ...

A new study has revealed a surprising wrinkle in our understanding of how pesticides affect bumble bees across the seasons.

The cuckoo queen bee then lays her own eggs and gains control of the host colony’s worker bees, who continue collecting pollen and nectar to feed the cuckoo queen’s offspring. Western bumblebees, the ...

The effects of pesticide exposure on pollinator health may be more complicated than originally thought, according to a team of researchers in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences who recently ...

A Tasmanian ban on the importation of queen bees from interstate will see local beekeepers increasingly turn to artificial insemination to ensure healthy bee populations. Tasmania's largest ...

A bumble bee queen must go through diapause—a dormant stage that enables an insect to withstand harsh environmental conditions—to survive to the spring, when she can start a new colony.