bee mother

plural bee mothers · alternative bee-mother · alternative beemother

1. rareA queen bee (perceived as the mother of the hive)

   Astonishingly, bee mothers can decide whether the egg they lay will develop into a male or female.

   2019, Alison Benjamin, Brian McCallum, The Good Bee

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   […] but how much more so when it must be acknowledged, that it is all owing to one female, and that this queen-bee, or bee-mother, alone, has given origin to such an immense progeny?

   1767, The complete Farmer

   The youngest of the sisters—the one at the bottom—is only a tiny egg, which the bee-mother has laid in the cell.

   1900, Allen Walton Gould, Mother Nature's Children, page 156

   The bee family is divided into three sections, the "queens," or bee-mothers, the drones, or male bees, and the workers. The duty of the "queen," or bee-mother, is to keep the hive well supplied with workers.

   1903, Lilla Elizabeth Kelley, Three Hundred Things a Bright Girl Can Do, page 577

   Imagine a monogamous bee mother and her supersister daughters (figure 6.2) who are preferentially helping their mother rear more supersisters (rₕₑₗₚ = 0.75): […]

   2024, Keith S. Delaplane, Honey Bee Social Evolution

   March is the time of Wihlaxs, Black Bear's Walking Moon. Nox Ap, the bee mother, awakens from her winter slumber along the realm of Xsan, the River of Mists. Nox Ap seems to appear from the great beyond as the bumblebee queen crawls out of her warm hiding space.

   2024, Hetxw’ms Gyetxw Brett D. Huson, The Bee Mother