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Author: Emma Ferrett
Date: August 19, 2025

queen bee, n

1. the fertile female bee in a hive
2. a woman who behaves dominantly in a group

“Dictionaries have always copied from one another.” So says Sidney Landau in his 2001 book Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography (p. 402). Here, Landau identifies the long-held process in dictionary-making where lexicographers look to other dictionaries to help establish the boundaries of their own definitions. After all, there are only so many ways to describe, for example, rand, “the monetary unit of South Africa.” We could try to change the phrasing so as not to appear to be copying other dictionaries … “South Africa’s monetary unit?” “The monetary currency of South Africa?” “The national monetary unit of the country of South Africa?”

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel unless we’re adding something significant. As Landau tells us, routinely checking how other dictionaries have defined a word is a big part of drafting definitions. And it’s a crucial step in our drafting process at the CED. Let’s look at the example of queen bee:

Merriam-Webster.com: the fertile fully developed female of a social bee (as the honeybee)
Dictionary.com: a fertile female bee
Cambridge.org: (insect) in a group of bees, a single large female that produces eggs
Canadian Oxford: (of bees) the fertile female in a hive

Fairly quickly, we can determine the relevant aspects of the definition and include or exclude any details we prefer. In this case, we omit Cambridge’s detail that the queen bee is large (lest we spend time and space defining exactly how large we mean by large, and in comparison to what). And the specifiers “(insect)” and “(of bees)” can be omitted since we’ve incorporated the word bee into our definition. We decided on:

1. the fertile female bee in a hive

(Bonus points for alliteration!)

You’ll notice that, of the sources above, I have only listed one other Canadian English dictionary. That isn’t because there are no other Canadian English dictionaries (there are). But the most recent generation of these dictionaries (such as Funk & Wagnall’s Canadian College Dictionary and Collins Gage Canadian Paperback Dictionary) are paper dictionaries that have had to make certain editorial sacrifices to save space (and printing paper). In this case, neither Funk & Wagnall’s nor Collins Gage define queen bee as a separate entry. And since these dictionaries were finished in 1988 and 2006, respectively, neither addresses the relatively recent social meaning of a human queen bee.

Of the human queen bee, our sources have this to say:

Merriam-Webster.com: a woman who dominates or leads a group (as in a social activity)
Dictionary.com: a woman who is in a favored or preeminent position
Cambridge.org: (woman) a woman who behaves as though she is the most important person in a group
Canadian Oxford:  a woman who holds a superior position in an organization etc.; a woman who behaves in a superior or controlling manner

These definitions are variations on a theme with subtle but important differences. Does the queen behave dominantly or does she dominate? Is she controlling? Is she the assigned leader or does she simply lead? We decided on:

2. a woman who behaves dominantly in a group

But there is clearly something still missing here. The problem with terms like these is that they have connotations that are hard to define. If the roster of pop culture queen bees (the queens of Mean Girls, Heathers, Gossip Girl and others) have cemented anything, it’s that queen bees are apparently also selfish, demanding, entitled and manipulative. And there is some sense that the queen bee attains her position undeservedly from these aspects of her personality, rather than from the fact that she may have earned her position from skill, experience and good leadership. And of course, there is the double standard that any man “who behaves dominantly in a group” is unlikely to be called a queen bee. Either way, this term is often used as an insult. So how do we convey these complex and unresolved tensions?

We used a usage note to warn readers that this is not a neutral term and that they need to be cautious and pay attention to context when using it:

This is the best solution we came up with in our first drafting stage. Can you think of a better way? Let us know on , or to share your defining or editing skills.