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The story
Male honeybees (drones) get exactly one chance to mate in their entire lives — and when it’s over, their genitals tear off and stay lodged inside the queen while they die in as little as five seconds. A Yahoo News article about this bit of biology sparked discussion on 5channel’s Science News+ board. While many commenters expressed sympathy for the males (“poor guys”), others pointed out that most drones never even get the chance to mate before being kicked out of the hive, and that queens and worker bees face their own brutal fate — discarded once they can no longer lay eggs — pushing back on the article’s framing that the males alone are the tragic ones.
The shocking reason male honeybees burst and die 5 seconds after mating
A male honeybee (drone) has exactly one job in his entire life.
And the moment he’s done it, he dies.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Re: #2 Don't you think all the other females that guy never even glances at are just as pitiful?
Except for the males, everyone in the hive is female, but only a tiny fraction of those females can actually reproduce.
Make a move on a worker bee and you'll either get ignored or, worse, killed.
Though it seems like they wanted to spin this into an article with a particular slant.
And then there's us.
Guess so — hurry up and burst already.
No pain, no thoughts, nothing going on in there.
I wonder what his death scream sounds like when he bursts.
maybe underground is actually the best part.
Might feel incredible down there, who knows.
They're living things designed to fill some role and keep the food chain running, but functionally they're like machines.
Bees, in this case, are designed for pollinating plants.
Free will, emotions, even the physical body itself — none of that is really necessary to begin with.
In the end, it's probably just beings of light that matter.
Everything else is basically a bug.
It's a world where males barely ever get to meet a female, so the one who latches on and actually locks in reproduction is the lucky one.
apparently octopuses and squid actually seek out pleasure.
She has to build and raise the hive and the eggs practically on her own.
And once she can't lay eggs anymore, she gets tossed out of the hive.
Absolutely brutal.
I feel like some seriously rotten smell is drifting over just from reading that…
Is it really "nice" to end up as nothing but a pair of testes fused into part of the female?
In 5 seconds, you're gonna… POP!
Background and key points of this discussion
In a beehive, drones have no job besides reproduction, and each one only gets to mate once in his life. During mating, part of the drone’s genitalia stays lodged inside the queen and tears off, and the shock kills him within seconds. This also plugs the queen so no other male can mate with her afterward — so it’s not simply tragic, but part of the species’ survival strategy. While many in the thread reacted with “poor males,” others pushed back, pointing out that most other drones never even get to mate before being driven from the hive, and that queens and worker bees face an equally harsh fate once they can no longer lay eggs — several posters questioned the article’s framing that singles out the males as the only pitiable ones. The thread also split between those who see insect behavior as mindless, feeling-free programming, and those who argue that’s just another human interpretation — altogether, not a topic that resolves into simple sentimentality.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Science News+) thread “[Explainer/Biology] The shocking reason male honeybees burst and die 5 seconds after mating.”
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