The Agrinautica

emo_snal would probably know better about whether the bees would have died or not without the queen — I wasn't able to be around for the bee removal, but I think that my husband said the bee guy told him that any that were left (maybe scouts that were away from the hive) would come back, notice the queen was gone, and would go out in search of a new hive to join, but that it was also likely that any other hives wouldn't want the stragglers to join them and they would just end up wandering around until they died. I thought that was pretty sad, too. :( But then, this story here talks about that, too! I wonder if the scout bees just understand that it's part of the job that you might end up left behind.