queen bee
Americannoun
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queen bees
plural
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a fertile female bee.
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a woman who is in a favored or preeminent position.
noun
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the fertile female bee in a hive
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informal a woman in a position of dominance or ascendancy over her peers or associates
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of queen bee
First recorded in 1600–10
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Elizabeth Debicki’s town queen bee, for example, went from being known as Doctor’s Daughter when she was a child to Tailor’s Wife after she got married.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 26, 2026
A queen bee reaches maturity in about 16 days, while worker bees require roughly 21 days.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 23, 2026
"This keeps the whole group tight together. It's like Guardiola is the queen bee at Manchester City and has got the right pheromones going through his hive at the moment."
From BBC ● Apr. 22, 2026
Now we’re on Vegas World; now we’re on Jurassic Planet; now we’re on a planet ruled by a gigantic queen bee.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 31, 2026
And Liza Guilfoyle, queen bee of the school.
From "Linked" by Gordon Korman
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
