Since I failed to mention them individually, I want to summarize three publications that have come out over the past months that span all levels of biological organization: While our article in Communications Biology in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Liu et al. doi:10.1038/s42003-026-10167-2) dissects in great detail the molecular and cellular events that allow the phenomenal reproductive plasticity of honey bee queens during colony swarming, the work of Gursimran (Toor et al. doi:10.1111/mec.70305) connects pesticide susceptibility and life history staging of honey bee workers at the phenotypic and genomic levels, while the work by Feng et al (doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2026.112515) represents a theoretical analysis of the ecological relation between managed honey bees and native bees due to the potential of shared disease.