Swedish university names queen bee after Beyoncé
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Singer-Songwriter Beyonce Knowles arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala (Met Gala) in New York, May 2, 2016. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)
Queen Bey now has a queen bee named after her in Sweden.
After the Stockholm campus of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology installed two beehives as part of a sustainability initiative, the university conducted an online poll to name the two queen bees.
The results? “Beeyoncé” is one of the queen’s names, and “Bee McBeeface” goes to the other.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Bee McBeeface moniker is a reference to a silly phrase, “Boaty McBoatface,” that won a British poll to name a new polar research vessel. The British government ultimately decided to name the $284 million ship the RRS Sir David Attenborough, and instead gave a remote-controlled submersible associated with the vessel the name Boaty McBoatface.
Related: Meet Boaty McBoatface - the drone submarine
The Swedish university was evidently happy to keep the queen bees’ names light-hearted, though.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The vote was fair and open, and a solid majority favored these names," the university’s environmental coordinator, Lina Häckner, said in a statement. "We received more than 10,000 votes; Bee McBeeface won 69 percent of the votes, and Beeyoncé got 16 percent."
The news gets even sweeter: the colonies and their thousands of bees will make honey for the university.
Follow Rob Verger on Twitter: @robverger