Sex…Only If Really Necessary in a Feminine Monarchy

The honey bee society was famously described as The Feminine Monarchy by the cleric Charles Butler in 1634. Honey bees and their relatives—including all hymenopteran societies—qualify for this label because their colonies are headed by one or a small number of fertile queens. These queens produce a large number of sterile or nearly sterile daughter workers and, later, with their assistance, produce a smaller number of fertile sons and daughter queens (1). The complex and diverse life cycles and social organization of the feminine monarchies are matched by their equally complex and diverse strategies for sexual and asexual reproduction (2). On page 1780 of this issue, Pearcy et al. (3) uncover a new dimension in the complexity of hymenopteran reproductio