The Bugs

[Ares Land]

The Bugs are my own take on a well-known sci-fi cliché. The name alone should make clear which one I mean!

In-universe, the Bugs are the dominant species of an Earth-like planet orbiting, of course Zeta 2 Reticuli.
The Bug homeworld is very Earth like, much more so than your typical exoplanet. It has similar climates, temperature range, and surface gravity. Even the year is about as long as ours. It has no moon, though Zeta 1 Reticuli is about as bright as the full moon.

Bugs are not insects.

The Bugs mostly get their name from their ant-like behavior, large dark eyes and long sensitive cilia on their foreheads which, from a distance, look like antennae.
But they're not insects. They have a spine, an endoskeleton, (sparse) hair, and feed their young with the secretions from specialized glands. In other worlds, if we had to make a comparison with Earth life -- we really shouldn't, though -- they would be closest to mammals (although they're oviparous, which would make them equivalent to monotremes).

Overall appearance

The bugs are bipeds, with a long, muscular and prehensible tail. They may adopt two distinct bipedal stances: either an upright, human-like posture, or a bird-like posture, keeping their spine more or less horizontal. In both case, they use their tail for balance; when standing upright, they may adopt a tripodal stance, using both legs and their tail. When walking, they will adopt the human-like posture; when running or jumping, they will adopt the bird-like posture.
They're digitigrades and their feet are bird-like, walking on three digits, a fourth one specialized as a spur.
Their hands have four long, thin fingers, and two rigid opposable thumbs (their closest relatives only have four fingers, and most likely their thumbs are a result of polydactyly).

Their skin is covered with tough, leathery scales, similar to alligator skin, and sparse, reddish sensitive cilia. It seems that their close relatives have fur -- our best guess is that their leather armor evolved as protection from parasites when they started living in large colonies.

They have large heads -- the most striking features of which are their large, black eyes. The mouth has a shape in between a snout and a beak, with sharp v-shaped lips. Between the eyes and the mouth are a series of vertical slits: two nostrils, and four heat-sensitive pits. Long cilia protect the eyes and the slits. The head is topped with two long tufts of reddish cilia, resembling horns or antennae. They seem sensitive to motion -- additionally they may protect the ear holes.
The largest castes have large, keratinous crests on the top of the head.

The eyes cannot move independantly; but a Bug can rotate its head up to 270 degrees.

Skin-tone ranges from pale grey to reddish brown, sometimes with bright green or blue patches.

Size is highly variable; depending on caste, Bugs may be from 2 feet~60 cm to 10 feet~3 meters tall.

The Hive

Bug colonies typically numbers in the hundreds; but there are reports of Bug cities with a population in the thousands or even the hundred thousands.
I've said before that the Bugs had ant-like behavior. What this actually means is that they're eusocial. Each colony has a handful of reproducing females (queens), with most of the population being sterile workers.

Queens

Bug queens can reach about three meters and weigh about 300 kgs. They’re large, musucular with a heavy fat layer, about the size of a large grizzly bear. They usually have greyish-brown skin, with an impressive head crest and long, thin, cilia.
A single queen will lay between 300 and 400 eggs a year. They never leave the nursery areas of the colony but young queens will on occasion found a new colony alone -- and at this stage in their lives, they’re fierce apex predators.
Queens may live up to 100-150 years.

Males
Males are about six feet tall, thin, lean and built for endurance. They have green-blue skin and long reddish cilia, as well as elaborate crests, all of which are probably status displays. They leave their home colony after reaching sexual maturity, living as solitary hunter-gatherers and only stopping at other Bug colonies to mate.
They're fairly short-lived, rarely reaching fifteen.

It has been theorized that Bugs are haplodiploids, like hymenopterans. Males only have half the number of chromosomes and thus no redundancy in genetic material. This may explain their relative fragility, which may serve as a way to eliminate harmful mutations (males always express harmful genes, and those carrying dangerous mutations rarely mate, or even reach reproductive hage).

Workers.

Workers vastly outnumber males and queens; they exist in three major subcastes.

Minor.

Minor workers are the smallest subcaste, they’re about three feet tall (roughly one meter) with grey skin and thin bodies. They usually concentrate on the tasks that require the less physical strength, chiefly caring for the young.

Minims are even smaller (about two feet tall), and rarely found in mature colony. They are the only caste present in young colonies. They’re both more versatile -- hunting, caring for the young and building the nest -- and more timid than typical workers.

Major
Majors are about seven feet tall. They’re lean and muscular, with a crest on the back of their head. Typically they’re hunters or soldiers, though they will be used for any task requiring physical strength.

Median workers are intermediate in size between majors and minors, about five feet tall, and handle tasks typical of both minor and majors; often enough they’ll be involved in nest construction.

Workers have a life expectancy of about fourty.

Reproduction and life cycle.

Vagrant males will stop by extant colonies, looking for young females to mate with. Fertile females will often exit the nest to meet the male, and they will mate outside. A single queen may mate with a dozen males, filling her spermatheca -- she will not mate again in her lifetime. Depending on the size of the colony and the extant resources, the young queen will either return to her native colony or move out to found her own.
In an extant colony, the queen will immediately start laying, in large batches of fourty to fifty eggs all through summer.
Founding queens, in cold climates, will gorge themselves on food and lay their eggs in the fall. They will also build a small 'farm', planting tubers and fungi to ensure a food source for their young. Founding queens may be accompanied by older workers from their original colonies -- in which case the workers will often die of old age the following year, and be eaten by the queen and its young. Several queens may cooperate in establishing a colony -- although they tend to fight and kill each other until only remains (queens will only coexist within the same colony when the food supply is ample enough).

The eggs, soft, with a leather-like shell, are incubated in decaying organic matter for warmth and moisture; this compost will later serve as fertilizer for the farm. The young are nursed at first only with 'milk', a secretion from the cod of the queen and other workers, then with cod milk mixed with regurgitated food, and then on solid food -- meat, tubers and fungi.
Workers will nurse and produce milk almost from birth and all through their lives -- the exchange of cod milk and regurgitated food between the young and workers, between workers, between workers and the queens, and even between queens is a major factor in colony cohesion. It seems that it serves as a means to share hormones and microbiota.
Bugs, in much the same way, will eat each others' feces.

Young bugs start out quadrupedal and gradually adopt a bipedal stance. A young colony will have six or seven mature minim workers within one or two years, at which point larger workers will start to be bred in greater numbers.

They come out at night, mostly
Bugs are adapted to a nocturnal life style, with their large eyes, heat and motion sensors and keen hearing.
Colonies are often mostly underground, or in a single, mound-like building, with no lighting besides fires for cooking and metalworking, usually kept in a separate area. They are loud in their colonies, but eerily silent when on the hunt. A party of Bugs suddenly appearing, seemingly out of nowhere, is a nerve-wrecking experience -- especially since their pale, subdued color gives them a spectral appearance.

They have strong adaptations to living in close quarters, in subterranean dwellings. In particular, they can survive with elevated carbon dioxide numbers. Perhaps as a result, they have acidic blood and sweat -- and have a fairly strong, acidic smell, especially in close quarters.

Native environment, guesses at evolution

The species evolved as omnivores and pack hunters. The ancestral structure may have been a band of five to ten individuals, daughters of a single dominant female. They are found almost anywhere on the planet, but their tendancy to be dormant in the winter hints, perhaps, at evolution in a cold climate.
True eusociality arose as a result of a quasi-symbiotic relationship with several varieties of trees, fungi and cereals, which allowed larger colony numbers.

Bugs are fast runners and excellent jumpers; but compared to human beings they have poor endurance. It seems their ancestors trapped their prey and caught them by surprise.
They prefer heavily wooded areas, and the largest settlements are surrounded by thick forests.

Warrior Bugs

Bugs will wage war against each other. Their aggressivity is strongly correlated with family relationship: a colony will largely leave a daughter colony alone, will attack more distant colony and try to exterminate unrelated colony. Still, there are some trade relationships, or exchange of tribute and males between colonies of equal strength.

There's no real warrior caste -- though major workers have the physical advantage. Rather, workers take care of increasingly dangerous tasks as they age, leaving war expeditions to the oldest workers. It can be said that human send their young men to war, and Bugs send their old ladies.

Their general aggressivity is a problem for exobiologists, though. Bugs perceive us as similar creatures and possible rivals, with no sign of any possible genetic relationship, which means that aggressivity towards humans is at its maximum and we're fighting creatures sometimes larger than us, will soon die and do not really care if they do anyway.
On at least one occasion, human beings have been trapped, killed and eaten by Bugs (unfortunately, our respective biochemistries are similar enough for us to serve as a food source, not very palatable, but attractive enough to starving colonies.)

Sentience, no Hive Mind
Are Bugs sentient? The subject was still being hotly debated. Certainly we would like to think that they act purely on instinct, like lowercase-b bugs. It would be comfortable, perhaps, to think that aggressive creature with unpleasant habits, who eat their own feces, their own dead, are willing to eat us when hungry enough and smell strongly of cat urine were not fellow sentient beings.

However, Bugs build cities, work out metals, sometimes wear metal plate as armor, wield bronze swords, build and captain ships, make traps, have domesticated animals and use complex language. They're definitely sentient.
We can judge relative sentient levels: males seem to be as smart as a bear; minims are at least as smart as chimps, the eldest workers and the queens exhibit greater-than-human intelligence.

There is no brain bugs, no Hive Minds, and colony intelligence does not reside solely within the queens. Each Bug appears to be, as far as we can judge, self-aware and sentient. They cooperate much as we do, through language and elaborate social structures. The queens and the oldest workers appear to be dominant, but even the smallest minim worker has a considerable amount of intelligence and self-awareness.

Bugs will gladly sacrifice themselves for the colony; but that's not because they lack individuality. It seems to be, rather, that they are governed by different emotions than we are. They have little instinct for self-preservation, for instance, and no concept of fear as we know it. But more on that in a later post.

Language
Well, I've posted enough for today, so I'll cover their language some other time For now, I'll just say that bugs communicate using eerie shrieks, unearthly wails and eldritch clicks and buzzes.

[alynnidalar]

For now, I'll just say that bugs communicate using eerie shrieks, unearthly wails and eldritch clicks and buzzes.

Quite a pleasant species you've described here; this is the cherry on the top!

[Ares Land]

Thanks! Let's talk a bit more about language, then.

Communication.

Besides some hormonal exchange through milk and feces sharing, as discussed above, the Bugs communicate mostly by sound. It has a greater range and is more easily modulable than scents. Visual communications would have suited discreet pack hunters -- and indeed Bugs will use a range of gestures when on the hunt, but would be useless in their underground colonies.

The frequencies used are all within our hearing range, fortunately -- or perhaps unfortunately as Bug vocalization sounds really unpleasant to human ears. They use a greater spectrum of frequencies, though, and great variations of amplitude (from barely audible to physically painful, though most of the time the amplitude is about that of normal human conversation.)
Even though it sounds awfully creepy to human ears, Bug communication is actually not that different from our language, considering. This is probably a case of convergent evolution: both species share a somehow similar lifestyle, are about the same size and use sound for the same purpose.

Sound production.

The details of sound productions show great differences, though. Vertebrate-like animals on the Bug homeworld have separate alimentary and respiratory tracts; so they use neither tongue nor vocal chords.
Instead what they have is an air cavity, located behind the air vents (their equivalent of nostrils), a rough analogue to our sinuses, and two sets of phonic lips: two pair of cartilagineous 'lips', attach to a bone, behind the air vents that may close or vibrate;
The phonic lips can close sharply (producing click-like sounds), produce short burst of clicks, add turbulence to the airflow, or vibrate like our vocal chords. Vibration within the air cavity is transmitted to surrounding tissue: the entire head serves as a resonator or a sound box.

In a manner of speaking, if we compared the human speech apparatus to a flute, the Bug speaking apparatus would be a guitar or a violin.

Sound types
Amplitude and frequency will vary between individuals; human beings distinguish sounds through resonant harmonic frequencies, called formants -- although we also use frequency and amplitude modulation. The Bugs have adopted a similar strategy.
Much like we move our tongues to change the mouth shape and alter formants, the Bugs raise or lower the bone that bears their phonic lips, thus changing the shape of the air cavity.

This provides one dimension along which we can place sounds.
There are others:

• - They may open or close their mouths, which provides another alteration to their sounds.
  - Typically, Bugs will use one set of phonic lips preferentially, but the other pair may vibrate slightly or not.

Another dimension is mode of articulation. Bugs can:

• - Close the phonic lips for some time, and then release air sharply within the cavity, producing a 'pop' sound.
  - Bring the phonic lips close together without impeding air flow, producing turbulence and a hissing sounds.
  - Close quickly the phonic lips, producing a 'click'-like sound
  - Produce a burst of clicks, making a buzzing sound.
  - Make the phonic lip vibrate, producing a wailing sound.

And finally, they may use length, frequency modulation and amplitude modulation.

We may classify the sounds they produce using a chart much like this :

Mode of articulation

Phonic lips position	Pop	Hiss	Click	Buzz	Wail
High	d	s	t	z	i
Mid	g	h	c	j	a
Low	b		k	r	u

Features

	Features
Lateralization	l
Length	:
Open mouth	n

This looks just like a phonemic inventory, and that's exactly what it is.

Actually, it is the phonemic inventory of the language of Breen, a very large Bug colony, and most of its relative in the surrounding peninsula. There's no such thing as a single Bug language; indeed Bugs use dialectal and language variation as a means to establish colony origin. (So a Bug pronouncing the equivalent of 'Shibboleth' in the wrong way will get herself butchered immediately)

I've used letters here, but they should be taken as mnemonics and a convenient transcription convention, and nothing more. I'll provide a rough pronunciation guide below, but for now I'll just say that the sounds listed bear only a very distant relation with the letter used to transcribe them.

Quantum of utterance.
Bug languages don't really have syllables. However, a given sound may be followed by up to two other sounds, forming a phoneme comparable to an affricate, a release or a diphthong. In the Breen language, the following sound must be to the right in the chart. That is, a 'pop' may have a 'buzz' or a 'trill' release, but not the other way around.
I've used vowel symbols and consonant symbols, but again, Bug languages don't make that distinction.

Some acceptable phonemes:
i: 'mother, queen'
bri:n, 'Breen'
tk:, 'rope'
aul, 'prey'

I should add that n and l aren't phoneme to their own right. bri:n should be bri[+ open mouth], aul is au[+ one phonic lib vibrating slightly}

To help in transcription, phonemes are separated by a dot:

bri:n.i: 'a queen of Breen'
tk:.r.ta: 'rope-maker'

Allophony

I've mostly skipped over allophony. There is a great deal of it, obviously, but we don't really know enough about other Bug languages to make a meaningful analysis.

Field guide to recognizing Bug sounds

Bug and human vocal tracts are different enough that neither species can pronounce the others' language convincingly. We can learn to distinguish Bug sounds, and Bugs can understand human speech (they have better hearing than us and thus are better at it). We can sort of imitate some Bug sounds, but nothing more, and likewise the Bugs can mimic some human words, but it sounds so off that we'd rather they didn't.
In other words, Bugs and human trying to communicate will have to resort to the Han-Solo-and-Chewbacca tactic.

Anyway, a rough idea of what the various phonemes sound like, mosty using poor similes and inadequate comparisons.

Pops:
d: a loud and sharp sound, like a piece of wood breaking.
g: similar, but more like a bad cough, or someone gagging.
b: a loud, sharp bark

Hisses:
s: a hiss; actually sounds like s or sh.
h: a more raucous variant of the same.

Clicks:
Those are hard to distinguish. All sound like an annoyed click of the tongue, but c has hints of a crow calling while k seems combined with a owl hooting.

Buzzes:
z: an insectlike buzz.
r: like a snarl or a growl
j is hard to distinguish, but somewhere between these two.

Wails:

i like a banshee scream, or the call of a barn owl.
a sounds like children laughing
u like a bird call.

Features:
Length is fairly easy to distinguish. i: sounds like a longer wail; b: like two barks in quick sucession.
n (open mouth) is hard to describe; it feels louder, with more resonance.
l (lateralization) gives an impression of dissonance, like a discordant chord, or vocal fry.

So bri:n doesn't sound like 'Breen' at all; it's more like a bark, continuing into a long snarl, with at the same time a long, resonant 'Ai!' culminating in a screeching wail.

tk.r.ta sounds like two clicks in rapid succession, followed by a very brief pause, a snarl, another pause, and an annoyed click combined with a brief 'ia!'.

[quinterbeck]

Excellent stuff!

Do you have a diagram of their vocal tract? I think I get it but a visual would help. In particular, it would be helpful to see how the movement of the phonic lip bone changes the cavity shape.

Can you expand on the airflow? If it's egressive in all cases, your 'pop' and 'click' would be equivalent to stop release and closure, right? Or is click the sound of the lips striking each other, like a clap?

How did you determine the quality of the sounds? Have you tried simulating them? I'd love to hear them

[Ares Land]

Thanks!

Here's a rough sketch of their vocal tract (my apologies, it seems I can write about as well as I can draw...)

Bugs.jpg (39.12 KiB) Viewed 19964 times

As to the difference between 'pop' and 'click', it's mostly a matter of how much pressure is lowered in the air cavity; when producing pops, Bugs remove more air from the air cavity than they do with clicks, so the release is at higher pressures. It's not unlike an ejective.
Airflow is always egressive in the language of Breen (which I've kept fairly simple phonology-wise); I suspect Bugs can recirculate air in various weird ways that may be used in other languages.

The phonic lips are rigid tissue (perhaps bone, at least hard cartilage) and covered with mucous membranes, so the sound of the lips striking each other is an important component, like a 'clap' with suction effect.

As for the quality of the sound, well, I figured the harmonics would be sort of like our vowels, except with only one dimension. High phonic lips would have a vague family resemblance with front vowels and low phonic lips with back vowels. Bugs have two sets of lips, but I figure they wouldn't use both tracks independantly of each other (it'd be kind of like beating two different rythms with two hands: doable with training but surprisingly difficult). But they can use the other pair to some extant. In the case of the language of Breen, they produce a discordant effect, with an audible beat, like a Wolf interval. Again, other languages make use of more possibilities. I have no idea what opening the mouth would do, except make it sound different, so well, I've kept things vague.

I'd love to try simulating those sounds but I haven't really (besides trying weird mouth noises). I think praat would do what I'd like to, and maybe I'll try to make Bug sounds with it someday. The one problem is that I've used up my entire knowledge of acoustic phonetics writing the post above... And I'd like to figure out some grammar first. I'm glad I managed to do away with syllables and the vowel/consonant distinction, now I have to something just as alien with the grammar.

Also, I'd like to make some Bug drawings, but I have to draw stuff like hands and feet and man, that's hard!

[Qwynegold]

Ew, ew, ew! This would totally fit in a horror sci-fi movie.

[mèþru]

Are they based in any way on Formics from the Enderverse?

[HazelFiver]

Interesting and well thought out -- better than any aliens I've come up with. You probably ought to use "sapient" rather than "sentient", though.

[Ares Land]

Ew, ew, ew! This would totally fit in a horror sci-fi movie.

Yes, I hope they'd be kinda scary

Are they based in any way on Formics from the Enderverse?

Yes, the Formics are one of the most interesting species in SF, as far as I know Orson Scott Card was one of the first to have characters that actually tried to understand the bug-eyed monsters... But other than that, I've very much tried to do my own things. Basically, I just took the basic idea of a scary, man-sized eusocial species and then tried to figure out how it would work out. I think the end result is very different from the Formics.

Interesting and well thought out -- better than any aliens I've come up with. You probably ought to use "sapient" rather than "sentient", though.

Thanks! And yes, that's a good point.

[rotting bones]

Maybe I missed it, but how do they transmit knowledge?

Regarding the source of the trope, they are literally called Bugs in Starship Troopers, which is probably its origin. They were later borrowed into Warhammer 40K as Tyranids and StarCraft as the Zerg.

[Ares Land]

Maybe I missed it, but how do they transmit knowledge

Language! ( See above for some details )

(Sci-Fi Bugs are traditionally part of a telepathic hive-mind, but not mine)

[rotting bones]

No, I mean how is the knowledge required for civilization (building cities, traps, etc.) transmitted to the next generation? Since they are sapient, the instructions are presumably not transmitted genetically. For example, are the queens walking encyclopedias who instruct the workers on everything? If so, how are the queens educated? Does the mother verbally transmit the instructions to her daughters?

ETA: I know these questions assume a lot. For example, older workers accompany a founding queen but die the next year. Is one year enough for these older workers to instruct the young generation of minims on everything? Is there simply not that much to transmit among workers, with the rest being handled by the queens? Do some workers stay alive longer as lore keepers? I'm not necessarily asking these exact questions. They are only meant to indicate the general class of questions I'm asking.

Also, in already existing cities, what are the social mechanisms by which knowledge is transmitted? I live in a city built by sapients, but it is still nontrivial for the knowledge of the older generation of workers to be transmitted to me. For example, are young workers assigned to teams led by older workers where they learn on the job? When does the queen instruct them, if ever? I don't suppose they have schools? Or perhaps a nesting house for young workers where they are trained in basic skills before being set loose upon the world? These questions only apply to the knowledge that is not transmitted genetically.

[Ares Land]

No, I mean how is the knowledge required for civilization (building cities, traps, etc.) transmitted to the next generation?

Oh! That's a very good question. I'll deal with existing cities first -- it's easier!

Also, in already existing cities, what are the social mechanisms by which knowledge is transmitted? I live in a city built by sapients, but it is still nontrivial for the knowledge of the older generation of workers to be transmitted to me. For example, are young workers assigned to teams led by older workers where they learn on the job? When does the queen instruct them, if ever? I don't suppose they have schools? Or perhaps a nesting house for young workers where they are trained in basic skills before being set loose upon the world? These questions only apply to the knowledge that is not transmitted genetically.

There are many possible social mechanisms. In fact, there should be at least as much variation as there is among human cultures.

Anyway, in Breen culture juvenile workers start working early, and help out their elder sisters, learning on the job, so to speak. They tend to take on more difficult tasks and to get out of the city more as they age.
So typically, they'll start out helping taking care of the young, then tending the fungi culture, then helping on construction, then helping with the tuber cultures and the cattle and finally hunting and war. Any given worker will take care of very different jobs over their lifetime: there's not really a sense of workers learning a trade in their youth and sticking to it through their lifetimes. They'll be in turns teachers and workers many times during their lives.
This will vary with caste; the minor workers don't get out as much as the others do, and the major get out of the city earlier -- their strength is most useful outside. (The medium workers are somewhere in between, but they tend to stay a long time on construction/repair jobs.)

As for the queens... They're typically older than the workers, and they remember a lot. In a sense, as they are much longer-lived, they're living memories of the colony. But they don't move much, and in most cases it's been decades since they've done anything with their hands. So if they teach anything, it'll be history, lore and politics. There's plenty of occasion to interact with them -- young Bugs take care of the queens and the eggs, and the queens are interested in reports from the older workers.

Schools are a possibility, and I've toyed with that idea. But I don't think it really fits Breen culture or the pre-modern lifestyle.

Since they are sapient, the instructions are presumably not transmitted genetically. For example, are the queens walking encyclopedias who instruct the workers on everything? If so, how are the queens educated? Does the mother verbally transmit the instructions to her daughters?

ETA: I know these questions assume a lot. For example, older workers accompany a founding queen but die the next year. Is one year enough for these older workers to instruct the young generation of minims on everything? Is there simply not that much to transmit among workers, with the rest being handled by the queens? Do some workers stay alive longer as lore keepers? I'm not necessarily asking these exact questions. They are only meant to indicate the general class of questions I'm asking.

Young unfertilized queens (should it be princesses?) take longer than workers to mature and they take on a variety of jobs during that time. They also memorize an awful lot of oral tradition, so yes, they're pretty much walking encyclopedias. If they found a colony alone, or with a few older workers, they'll have to do a lot by themselves during the first few years (but swarming is just as common). Basically, yeah, they'll have to teach the minims everything (young Bugs aren't as helpless as human children, and they work a bit on instinct, but as you said, information transmission is non-trivial). Of course, a lot of knowledge will be lost along the way. New colonies often can get the help of neighbouring colonies relearning more complex skills, like city building or metallurgy.
Founding queens and their young have to fend for themselves, but they're non-threatening and often related to their neighbours so they won't trigger aggression and a great deal cultural interaction is possible.

I should add that founding queens often have a rough time of it, and often don't make it. It's basically a way to get rid of extra sexuates, the next step up from outright killing them.

As for accompanying workers... well, it depends on how much resources the parent colony has to spare. If the initial colony is rich and can spare the workforce, it'll send younger workers that have a few years left.

[Salmoneus]

Wait, these are meant to be the Breen? I don't know much, but I don't think this matches the impression I had of the Breen...

EDIT: apparently one author's bugs are indeed known as the Dreen...

[Ares Land]

Wait, these are meant to be the Breen? I don't know much, but I don't think this matches the impression I had of the Breen...

EDIT: apparently one author's bugs are indeed known as the Dreen...

No, that was unfortunate naming on my part (I don't watch Star Trek much). I'll use Bri:n from now on.

Bri:n is the name of one of their cities; the species are known as the Bugs until I find a better name.

[rotting bones]

Thanks, Bugs sound exactly like the future of the human race.

Schools are a possibility, and I've toyed with that idea. But I don't think it really fits Breen culture or the pre-modern lifestyle.

The Aztecs had public schooling of sorts.

New colonies often can get the help of neighbouring colonies relearning more complex skills, like city building or metallurgy.
Founding queens and their young have to fend for themselves, but they're non-threatening and often related to their neighbours so they won't trigger aggression and a great deal cultural interaction is possible.

Do the queens send workers to teach new colonies or learn from old ones? Do workers of the new colony visit old colonies to learn skills of their own initiative? Is there a system to control who will be admitted?

[Ares Land]

Thanks, Bugs sound exactly like the future of the human race.

I hope not!

New colonies often can get the help of neighbouring colonies relearning more complex skills, like city building or metallurgy.
Founding queens and their young have to fend for themselves, but they're non-threatening and often related to their neighbours so they won't trigger aggression and a great deal cultural interaction is possible.

Do the queens send workers to teach new colonies or learn from old ones? Do workers of the new colony visit old colonies to learn skills of their own initiative? Is there a system to control who will be admitted?

Both can happen -- though in very small colonies the queen will be the most-experienced one and makes more decisions (also, she knows where the friendly colonies are). Often there'll be some trade, or gift-giving involved.

As to who will be admitted, it depends on how the colonies are related and if there's bad blood between the colonies. Workers in Bri:n and related colonies memorize long genealogies which help pinpoint how exactly they're related. Other cultures use scarification, bearing 'colony marks' on their skins.
Language variation also serves as a colony maker -- the dialect of a worker is a pretty good tell-tale of what colony she's from!

[Raphael]

Just discovered this thread yesterday. Wow! Cool! Amazing!

You've already partly answered this, but how many orders do the queens give? I asked because from what I've heard and read about real-live eusocial insects, I've got the impression that their queens don't actually give all that many orders to their hives - they're mostly glorified egg factories. But that doesn't stop SF and fantasy writers from coming up with fictional eusocial species in which the queen is always the decision maker. That kinda bugs me (sorry about the pun).

On at least one occasion, human beings have been trapped, killed and eaten by Bugs

Only once?

[Ares Land]

Just discovered this thread yesterday. Wow! Cool! Amazing!

You've already partly answered this, but how many orders do the queens give? I asked because from what I've heard and read about real-live eusocial insects, I've got the impression that their queens don't actually give all that many orders to their hives - they're mostly glorified egg factories. But that doesn't stop SF and fantasy writers from coming up with fictional eusocial species in which the queen is always the decision maker. That kinda bugs me (sorry about the pun).

Oh, thanks!

To answer your questio, we'll have to do a bit of alien psychology first.

The Bugs don't, usually, give and take orders. They're naturally altruistic and they genuinely can't distinguish their kin's need from their own.
If a Bug is hungry, then she feels that her sisters are hungry too; likewise if a sister signals that it's hungry, she wil start feeding her because she feels the hunger herself.
So if they perceive that somethings needs to be, chances are she'll do it. This varies from individual to individual: minor workers assigned to the nursery feel more strongly about the young's needs; medium workers are more concerned with architectural integrity.
So a Bug will not signal to another 'mend the roof!", she'll just say that the roof needs mending. They don't do primate hierarchy like we do. For us, putting others' needs before our own require effort; technically, it still takes a bit of effort for a Bug, but a lot less than for humans.

But some individuals will have more influence than others. Bugs are individuals -- some of them are smarter, some are lazy, some are even aggressive towards their kin. There's no contradiction with what I say above. A Bug not fixing the roof when it needs doing is a bit akin to what we do when we don't exercise even though we notice that climbing up stairs take more effort than it used to, or not sleeping properly even though we're tired.
Some Bugs are better at what they do -- or they're perceived as being better at what they do! -- so their signals get higher priority.

So, Bug Alpha telling that the roof needs mending will recruit a lot of workers, while Bug Beta will get a bit less success -- and often won't signal anything. In other words, they have a hierarchy, but it's more based on information priority.
So who's on top of that hierarchy? Typically, older, experienced workers. So a Bug colony is typically run by an elite of senior workers.

But your question was about the queens. Well, they are crucial in the colony so their signals are treated as highest priority. In addition to that, they're often older than the workers, and smarter than them. So if a queen says that something needs doing, it will definetly get done. But they don't meddle in the day-to-day running of the colony. Most of the time, they don't have pertinent information to offer. They lead a claustrated lifestyle: by the time information about a problem reaches them, chances are it's already being taken care of.
So they mostly act as an authority on How Things Are Done, in a general manner, and they may mediate disputes, and even then they're mostly concerned with the big picture. Like: 'should we go investigate these claims of tail-less Bipeds or should we prepare for war against the closest rival colony?'
If you've watched Downton Abbey, you can think of the queens as the Dowager Duchess: above it all, mostly, but when she says something won't be done, it won't be done.
By the way, there's a hierarchy of sort among queens; the senior queens get higher priority over the younger ones.

Oh, and in younger colonies, the queen is the most experience worker as well. So in that specific case, the queen does decides everything.

Usually in sci-fi, the workers are dumb as sticks and need constant micromanagement. But most of the time, a worker Bug needs no management at all. She's smart enough to figure out what to do, and she can be trusted to do what's best for the colony, so she'll act mostly on her own initiative.
It's only for tasks requiring precise coordination, in war, for instance, that the senior workers really take charge, and likewise 'royal advice' is mostly taken in the most extreme cases.

On at least one occasion, human beings have been trapped, killed and eaten by Bugs

Only once?

Hmm, I haven't figured out the exact body count yet But the Bugs usually exercise caution around humans; they've figured out we have better weaponry than they do. The most dangerous colonies are the small ones, really: they're not very sophisticated and quite hungry so they have less qualms about hunting alien monsters. (The large colonies are very interested in getting their hands on our cool toys, and they understand that it'll require subtlety.)

[Raphael]

Thank you!