How many queens in a colonies of insects?

Answer 1

There are many kinds of colony. If you mean bees, then there is only one queen bee except for any young ones being raised to start new colonies. If you mean social wasps like hornets, there might be just one, but in most species there could be several, or you could say none in some kinds of colonies because all the members of the colony lay eggs. On the other hand, in such a colony you could say that they are all queens.

Then there are ants. Ants live in colonies that differ from each other so much that it is hardly possible to say anything interesting that is true for all of them. Some kinds of ants only have one queen and no colony; she goes out and looks for a colony of a suitable species of ant, works her way in, finds the queen, climbs onto her back and waits until the workers are used to her and feed her. Then she bites off the head of the real queen and starts laying her own eggs for the workers to raise. Some kinds of ants, like the Argentine ant have colonies with many queens, and some kinds of ant have colonies with just one queen.

Termite colonies start out with only one queen, but in some kinds of termite colonies when the queen dies, instead of the colony just dying out, they will raise a few small substitute queens to take her place. These substitutes are not generally as effective as the original giant queen and as a rule such a colony will not last many years. However, they might manage to produce some flying termites to start new colonies before their own colony runs down and dies.

So you can see that the problem with your question was that it was only half a question so you could only get half an answer and then only if you were lucky. When you ask a question do try to think a little more carefully about what it is you want to know. The more carefully you think about the question, the more useful the answer is likely to be to you.