like what if the first person to coin the phrase, for the one bee that lays around just producing offspring, lived in a world that had no monarchies? or, were radically opposed to the concept.

also what do you think we would name them today if we just found them?

    • @RedditRefugee69
      link
      25 months ago

      Does that mean Beowulf means bee wolf in old English?

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        25 months ago

        Yes, or perhaps less literally “bee hunter”, it was used as euphemism for a bear. There’s some theories that saying the actual word for bear was taboo (some theories say that people believed saying it’s name could attract one), so they used euphemisms like that, or “the brown one”, bero, which is where the English word “bear” comes from.

        • @RedditRefugee69
          link
          15 months ago

          Now that just makes me curious as hell about the original work for bear. Maybe something more similar to the Latin “ursa”?

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      16
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Interesting bee fact -

      In a hive that has been queenless for a period of time (long enough that there’s no way they can raise a replacement queen), one or more workers may develop the ability to lay unfertilized eggs.

      Due to how honeybee genetics work, those unfertilized eggs can hatch into drones (males), which may then have the opportunity to mate with queens from nearby colonies.

      I guess this is sort of a last ditch effort to propagate the hive’s genetic material before it fizzles out and dies. Which I think is fascinating.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    46 months ago

    “Matron” it’s a term you can use and is the head lady of a family, usually implying wisdom and a lot of influence.

  • Skua
    link
    fedilink
    46 months ago

    I feel like this is something other languages must have answers for, but I’m not finding any articles or discussions about it. Like in German it’s “Bienenkönigin”, which is literally the words for bee and queen, but surely that’s not the case for every language. The only other thing I can think of is just checking random languages one by one and that’s not something I want to do on mobile.

    Anyway I’d call them julia beesars

    • @[email protected]OP
      link
      fedilink
      26 months ago

      I tried googling “queen bee in Arabic” but I can’t tell if it’s giving me the Arabic term for queen bee or if it’s just translating the words lol

      • Skua
        link
        fedilink
        56 months ago

        I find a good way to find the common name for something in another language is to go to its wikipedia page and see what the equivalent page in the other language is called. So in Arabic it’s “ملكة النحل”. The ملكة part does indeed mean queen