Why do bees have queens? 2 biologists explain this insect’s social structure – and why some bees don’t have a queen at all

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Phil Starks, Tufts University and Aviva Liebert, Framingham State University

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Why do bees have queens? – Rhylie, age 8, Rosburg, Washington

When you think “bee,” you likely picture one species that lives all over the world: the honey bee. And honey bees have queens, a female who lays essentially all of the eggs for the colony.

But most bees don’t have queens. With about 20,000 species of bees worldwide – that’s about 2 trillion bees – the majority of them don’t even live in groups. They do just fine without queens or colonies.

Instead, a single female lays eggs in a simple nest, either inside a plant stem or an underground tunnel. She provides each egg with a ball of pollen mixed with nectar that she collected from flowers, and she leaves the eggs to...