Long live the queens
10:00 AM CDT on August 6, 2026
Women present a lot of paradoxes. For example, they live longer than men yet also experience more frailty later in life. Additionally, extraordinarily fertile females (like queen bees) live considerably longer than non-fertile females and males. But why?
A team led by scientists from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in California is seeking to reconcile these paradoxes in a new framework called the Reproductive Resilience Hypothesis, published yesterday in the journal Cell.
Under traditional models of aging, reproduction and longevity are often seen as at odds with one another. After all, resources are limited, and those invested in offspring can’t be utilized for regular body maintenance. But it doesn’t explain why women live longer than men, or why queen bees, for example, live for years while drones live only weeks. In fact, in many species, the females that invest more heavily in their offspring also live longer lives.
