The queens in colonies of social insects, such as ants, bees, and wasps, are considered the veritable embodiment of specialization in the animal kingdom. The common perception is that the queen's only ...

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 ...

Iberian harvester ant queens have a unique superpower: They can lay eggs that hatch into an entirely different species. This discovery, described in a new paper published September 3 in the journal ...

Scientists have discovered an ant species which uses a technique so devious to start a colony that it could change our understanding of animal social systems. Beginning a colony can be perilous for a ...

A mother's love isn't necessarily universal across the animal kingdom, with some mothers even resorting to eating children who aren't quite up to scratch. Ant queens in colonies of black garden ants ...

Scientists document a new form of host manipulation where an invading, parasitic ant queen "tricks" ant workers into killing their queen mother. The invading ant integrates herself into the nest by ...