The queen bee of any holiday is often the trip instigator. Maybe it’s their 40th birthday group trip to Bali, or maybe they just know how to pull off an itinerary. The queen bee loves an Excel spreadsheet or a Google Doc. Months in advance, they’ll request your details, suggest flights and hotels, and ensure you’re fully committed to the financial and logistical investment of a group trip.
Usually an A-type personality, the queen bee - who can be of any gender by the way - operates with a simple M.O. That is, to pull everyone in line, rally the troops and genuinely ensure the trip’s costs are shared accurately.
But sometimes the queen bee’s intentions are not purely virtuous – they’re not the great volunteer martyr of the Long Weekend on Waiheke. Being a queen bee can be a power trip. It makes a person feel important, “needed”, and a lot of people get off on that. They create a hierarchy they’re on top of. If everyone does what they’re told, the trip usually goes smoothly.
Where queen bees go wrong is when someone deigns to challenge their authority or questions their decision-making, often with a sin as simple as skipping an activity for a holiday nap.
This happened in my group recently on a trip in Australia. One person questioned how much they were paying for meals despite not drinking alcohol. The costs were being split evenly, but that non-drinker felt uncomfortable chipping in for the daily “Why Not?” round of $26 negronis. Within days, that discomfort turned into a blow-out on “respect” and “I wouldn’t treat…” with the queen bee, leaving feelings hurt as they asserted dominance.
I’d love to say this was avoidable, but on any trip with mates - especially international - you’re bound to come across high emotions at some point. This is expected when you add tiredness, sun, booze, airport stress and uncomfortable accommodation into the mix, let alone those personal foibles you never let out in public.
How did we - the rest of the group - proceed when a disagreement between the queen bee and one of their “worker bees” threatened to derail everyone’s enjoyment? A sit-down intervention was required.
The rest of us workers smoothed things over (reimbursing the non-drinker was, obviously, the easiest to do - like paying tax the first time). However, what that also did was change the queen bee’s whole attitude for the rest of the trip. They remained terribly short with many of us, upset that their careful planning wasn’t seen as fair to everyone, despite all the work they’d put in.
I reckon this friend won’t be invited on another trip organised by that queen bee. Once wronged, the queen bee places a black mark against the perpetrator’s name. The queen bee, I must add, is often also the queen of grudges.
As a bystander to all this drama, it upset my holiday too. The fracture in the group created communal anxiety, gossip and forced some of us (including myself) into “rescue” mode.
When you’re someone like me (who hates conflict and has a strong desire for peace and tranquillity), being in rescue mode is a natural place. Like the queen bee gets off on being at the top of the hierarchy, the “rescue bee” loves solving problems. There’s a certain pleasure in calming others down, de-escalating an argument, and making sure everyone feels heard. You’re basically the group’s courtesy therapist, and that comes with its own sense of power and thus, respect.
How best to deal with a queen bee? Well, if you like relying on others and being told what to do, where to be, and how to pay, without question, you’ll be fine. That’s how worker bees best work with their queen - by trusting them.
However, I recommend assigning a deputy queen bee. This person should co-chair the trip, so the original queen doesn’t commandeer everything. By requiring the queen bee to share the power, tensions can be more easily defused, because they don’t take such strong offence when their authority and decisions are questioned. This deputy is ideally a very close friend of the original queen bee, who understands their personality and knows how to talk them down off a ledge when problems arise.
And if you want to safeguard yourself from queen bee dramas altogether, there’s a solution: do everything yourself. Book your own everything, pay your own way every transaction, and never owe anybody anything.
Will this be my strategy going forward, or am I happy stepping in as rescue bee when needed? “Caretaker” is in my skillset but, to be frank, I would rather not be solving interpersonal problems from a beach with rosé in hand. It’s my holiday too, so perhaps I’m best to travel alone and avoid the hive’s stressful dynamics altogether.
