The reproductive cycle of bees is extremely fascinating - and of course complex. However to make it short: a queen bee is selectively bred in a special "queen cell" in the hive and fed royal jelly honey by worker bees to induce her to become sexually mature.
A virgin queen that survives to adulthood without giving a chance of being killed by her other rivals will take a mating flight with a dozen or so male bees (out of tens of thousands eligible bachelors in the colony). But don't call these drones lucky because during mating, their genitals explode and snap off inside the queen!
Strange as it is, this incident actually makes evolutionary sense: the snapped-off penis acts as a genital plug to prevent other drones from fertilizing the queen. But tell that to the dead drone whose penis just exploded.
[This strategy is so successful that it is apparently employed by other species of animals, such as the male wasp spider]
