🐝 Virgin queens mate early in their lives and only attend one mating flight. After several matings during this flight, a queen stores up to 100 million sperm within her oviducts. However, only five to six million are stored within the queen's spermatheca. The queen uses only a few of these sperm at a time to fertilize eggs throughout her life. If a queen runs out of sperm in her lifetime, new generations of queens will mate and produce their own colonies.⁠ ⁠ _____⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ #bees #queenbee #bee #mating #mates #biology #science