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How does the "Queen Termite" achieve her "position"?

Question #65426. Asked by zbeckabee.

Candide62
Answer has 1 vote
Candide62

Answer has 1 vote.
By birth - she's the only fertile, female on in the mound, I think.

May 07 2006, 10:40 AM
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zbeckabee
Answer has 2 votes
zbeckabee
Moderator
19 year member
11752 replies avatar

Answer has 2 votes.
Pretty close...Each season a colony of termites produces MANY kings and queens...thus, there is a set of circumstances that actually leads up to the many queens EACH having their own colony...and what would those circumstances be?

May 07 2006, 11:12 AM
silvermace
Answer has 1 vote
silvermace

Answer has 1 vote.
the circumstances might be like good health and stuff, or mabey their like bees who have like a few qeeuns, first one to come out of their egg kills the rest before they're born and become a queen

May 07 2006, 4:43 PM
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zbeckabee
Answer has 2 votes
zbeckabee
Moderator
19 year member
11752 replies avatar

Answer has 2 votes.
Uh...noooooo...that's not it either...let's go over it one more time...there is a set of circumstances that actually leads up to the many queens EACH (EACH, EACH, EACH, EACH, EACH) having their own colony...and those circumstances would be????

May 07 2006, 5:37 PM
mementoflash
Answer has 5 votes
Currently Best Answer
mementoflash

Answer has 5 votes.

Currently voted the best answer.
At maturity, a primary queen can lay several thousand eggs a day. In physogastric species, the queen adds an extra set of ovaries with each moult, resulting in a greatly distended abdomen and increased fecundity. The distended abdomen increases her size in some species to as much as 10 centimetres, hundreds of times the orginal size, effectively immobilizing her. In times where the queen must be moved to a new chamber it requires a group effort to move her whereby hundreds of workers are required to push her. The queen is widely believed to be a primary source of pheromones useful in colony integration. As a reward for attending workers a juice is secreted from the queen's posterior for the workers to drink. The king remains only slightly bigger than an average termite and continues to mate with the queen for life. This is especially unusual since ant societies have colonies with only a queen which mates once with the male and stores his gametes for life. Males in ant colonies die immediately after mating unlike termite male alates which become kings and live with the queen. The alate caste also referred to as the reproductives caste are the only termites with well developed eyes. In some cases termite mounds have been opened to find multiple queens and kings in a single nest chamber.

link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termite

May 07 2006, 8:00 PM
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zbeckabee
Answer has 2 votes
zbeckabee
Moderator
19 year member
11752 replies avatar

Answer has 2 votes.
All well and good...The queen and king are the only termites with wings. A colony produces many queens and kings each season. They leave, swarm, mate, lose their wings and start a new colony. The wings are quickly shed after flight with a simple body flick when the swarming termites find a new nest site, pair up and dig in...And that, my friends...is how the cow ate the cabbage.

May 07 2006, 8:11 PM
mementoflash
Answer has 1 vote
mementoflash

Answer has 1 vote.
Its hard not to become squirmism when reading about the reproduction of termites.

May 08 2006, 7:00 AM
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zbeckabee
Answer has 2 votes
zbeckabee
Moderator
19 year member
11752 replies avatar

Answer has 2 votes.
No Joke!!! I watched a documentary on these awful little critters and still can't rid myself of the Queen's image...so huge and bloated that many of the worker termites did nothing but shift her body back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...Ugh!!!

May 08 2006, 7:31 AM
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