Hive Caste System - TV Tropes
Hive Caste System
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Oftentimes, when Bee People show up to fight a Bug War against humanity, while the humans use the full panoply of technology, including spaceships , tanks , Powered Armor , and military aircraft, the Bugs are likely to instead use specialized castes of their own race, with a large level of polymorphism between different castes of the same species to adapt them to specialized roles. This system is actually inspired by certain Real Life ants, bees and termites, who indeed come in several of the varieties seen below.
Some will be Workers, who build weapons or just dig tunnels for their Elaborate Underground Base .
Some will be Warriors, who either fight with weapons or just charge forward and try to bite and claw their enemies to death.
Some will be oversized versions of the warrior , tougher to kill and big enough to bite through tanks.
Some will have specialized weaponry as part of their body, spraying acid, flame , or darts.
Some may burrow into the brains and/or spines of their enemies and take them over as puppets .
Some may be psychic or just superintelligent Brain Bugs who tell everyone else what to do.
And of course there's usually the Insect Queen , who lays eggs and is probably bigger and badder than the other castes.
And then sometimes Drones, who pretty much exist to mate with the queen and not much else .
Since the Ants and Bees that inspired this trope have all-female worker castes, this often leads to a sort of One-Gender Race .
When aliens have a caste system, but the various castes are not physically very different, that's not this trope, that's Fantastic Caste System . Often leads to Crippling Overspecialization for individuals, or is a way to avoid it for the race as a whole.
Examples:
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     Anime & Manga 
The manga version of Chrono Crusade mixes this trope with Fantastic Caste System for the demons. Although we're never told the details of the system, demons often talk about the "rank" of themselves and other demons, and the higher the "rank", the less beast-like and more intelligent and powerful the demon seems to be. There also seems to be clearly defined roles for demons—among the ones the audience learns about are Pursuers (which seem to be Demon Cops of some sort), soldiers, Sinners (outcasts), and Pandaemonium, the Hive Queen .
     Card Games  
The Slivers in Magic: The Gathering are pretty solidly this. The trope is played with in that their apparent home plane, Rath, is a Death World , and so even the lowest of the low of them are deadly enough to kill and devour a human—there is no real "worker caste", just "specialized breeds that are useful in this particular tactical environment". Each breed also shares their adaptations with everyone else in the hive. Thrulls also fit the bill. There are even some that exist primarily to be worn as armor by other creatures.
     Comic Books  
The Evronians from Paperinik New Adventures .
    Film ï¿½ Animated 
In Antz , even though the ants are Petting Zoo People , soldier ants are about twice the size of workers and have Heroic Builds . The Queen has an enlarged abdomen and gives birth every ten seconds, though Princess Bala does not yet look any different from a worker.
    Film ï¿½ Live-Action 
Starship Troopers The Movie and its direct-to-DVD sequels added Plasma Bugs, who shot blue death from their butts clear up to orbit; Tanker Bugs, giant bombardier beetles who spat red death at close range; Chariot Bugs, who carried around the bloated Brain Bugs; Hoppers, which could fly but were otherwise similar to Warriors; and in the later films Control Bugs, who were much smaller and could mind-control people similar to Puppeteer Parasites , and the God-Bug or Brain-Of-Brains Behemecoatyl, a top-level caste with a hyperintelligent and telepathic Bug that overgrows most of a planet. See Literature for the book, where they were quite different.
The Alien series features several stages of life for Xenomorphs, from facehuggers through chestbursters to your standard double-jawed Giger nightmare. And then there was the Queen, who laid eggs and was fiercely protective of her offspring . It was implied and then later confirmed in the movies, video games, and books that the xenomorphs take on characteristics from the host they gestate within. That explains why a chestbuster coming from a dog looks doglike and why one from a Predator is bigger than those from humans and has the characteristic mandibles and dreadlocks. Novelizations and Expanded Universe material would feature more castes, such as tiny drones (who serve the Queen) and even a "Pretorian class," which was far tougher than the standard Xenomorph.
    Literature 
Starship Troopers . In the original novel, there were workers, who couldn't fight but were available in huge numbers and useful for diversions; Warriors, who fought with technological weapons equal to those of the Mobile Infantry; Brain Bugs, who psychically controlled most of the rest; and Queens, who laid eggs in huge numbers but did little else. However workers and warriors (which compose 99% of the race) are nearly identical in appearance. This is actually a plot point, when a massive decoy force — composed entirely of non-aggressive workers — is used as a feint.
Older Than Television : H. G. Wells ' The First Men in the Moon (1901).
The Mote in God's Eye . The Moties are divided up into a number of castes, including Mediators, Engineers, Physicians, Warriors and Masters. They have genetically based differences in bodies and mindsets.
Kevin J Anderson's The Saga of Seven Suns has the Ildirans with dozens of different castes, each different enough that some of them don't even appear to be the same species.
Averted in the Spellsinger books, where the social ranks of Plated Folk are determined by what species of insect they are, rather than what caste within a species.
There's a borderline example with the Killiks in the Dark Nest Trilogy . Killiks in general are hivemind insects, and the people of other species who've been absorbed into the hive mind are called Joiners. There are several species of Killik, all of them sentient, all of them different somehow - mostly, these are minor things like speed, dexterity, priorities like aesthetics, skills, and preferred tactics, but some are particularly specialized, from being only inches long to fifty-meter-long tanks.
The Vord from Codex Alera , which adapt different sub-species to deal with specific situations. Vord Queens, Vord warriors, wax spiders (which fill the "worker" slot) and Takers are the standard castes, but there are many more beyond that which are created during the course of the series.
In David and Leigh Eddings's The Dreamers quartet, the original workers and warriors are joined by humanoid bugs capable of semi-independent thought. Eventually this causes problems for the species as contrary points of view need to be dealt with for the first time.
In the Xeelee Sequence , Olympus Mons becomes a librarian hive—a great Archive full of large-headed Scholars, lean book-finding Runners and spiderlike Maintenance Workers.
Common in Perry Rhodan ; if an intelligent alien species is insectoid, it's all but guaranteed to have a hive structure and be run by a highly intelligent queen who's also generally still the overall mother of her people. After that, caste specialization varies with the individual species.
The Parshendi from The Stormlight Archive have a partial variant of this. Each Parshendi is able to assume one of several different forms using the Mana from the frequent highstorms. At the start of the series, they know five forms, plus a sixth. First is warform, which grants strength and causes them to grow plate armor. Workform has strength comparable to warform, but lacks the armor and has a mental block against violence. Mateform is used for reproduction, while nimbleform is quick and dexterous. There is also dullform, a baseline form with no advantages. Finally, we have slaveform, the near-mindless "absence of form" in which the vast majority of Parshendi exist, and which is used by the humans as a Slave Race . During the second book, they unlock stormform, which grants Shock and Awe powers but opens the wearer to possession by Odium .
The corelings in The Warded Man series. There are the near-mindless elemental drones (fire, water, rock, sand, wind, etc), the shapeshifting mimics, the psychically gifted mind corelings, and the unseen Queen.
The Jan in Alien in a Small Town have male Workers, the majority of their population; sterile Warriors, with six clawed arms and giant fanged jaws; and breeding Matriarchs, who essentially mature into sessile living mountains, and serve as the leaders of Jannite society.
     Live Action TV  
In Farscape , the Scarrans have at least three castes in their hierarchy, sorted into Low, Middle and Ruling class: the Low-class
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" Scarrans are used as warriors, torturers, and ambassadors ; the Middle-Class
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Scarrans tend to be found acting as bodyguards to the Ruling class; finally, the telepathic Ruling-Class
Scarrans are high-ranking politicans and military officers, though some are happy acting as torturers and secret agents.
The Wraith on Stargate Atlantis are divided into Queens at the highest strata (typically just one per Hiveship), followed by male Wraith (functioning in officer and science capacities), and Wraith soldier-drones at the bottom, who are under the constant mental influence of the higher groups. Sometimes there are human Wraith worshippers as well, who are akin to pets/slaves for the Wraith. The queens themselves have a hierarchy with a You Kill It, You Bought It mentality.
In Babylon 5 the insectoid race Gaim is divided into several castes like queens, warriors, workers and the only humanoids ambassadors. Not that you'll know this from the show itself. There is also fan speculation about a caste system among the Drakh, because of the very different look of the leaders and soldiers.
     Other Sites  
. The humanoids who live in SCP-1702 are of three types: an Insect Queen who mainly lays eggs, male drones who fertilize the Queen and sterile females who do most of the work.
     Tabletop Games  
The Tyranids from Warhammer 40,000 don't have castes per se, but various different types of Tyranid creatures bred to do a specific job, ranging from enormous Hive Ships to not-quite-as-enormous (but still as big as most Humongous Mecha ) Biotitans to various Synapse Creatures (that control lesser Tyranid creatures) to tank-sized montrosities and smaller and more numerous warrior organisms. Non-combat Tyranid creatures include the Norn Queen (that breeds other Tyranids inside the Hive Ships), capillary towers and mycetic spores (organic drop pods). Even their weapons and ammo are Tyranid creatures. Granted, they are not bug people, but the Tau have a caste system where members of each caste possess different physiology. The military Fire caste are tall and strong, the pilot Air caste are slender and have better depth-perception and G-force tolerance, and the worker Earth caste are short and stocky.
The Lizardmen of Warhammer fantasy have the Skinks (drones) Saurus (warriors) and Kroxigor (workers) with the Slann as the kind of 'Queen Bee'. Although all four of them will fight if called upon. The Skinks also act as scribes and overseers to the others, (and some can do magic) while the Kroxigor double up as Giant Mooks in battle.
Dungeons & Dragons :
The Formians, an ant-like Outsider race with various specialized subtypes (worker, warrior, elite warrior, winged warrior, giant warrior, observer, taskmaster, and queen). All outsider types are specialized in a similar, although less overtly insectoid, way; Modrons are the most obvious.
Beholder hives have Hive Mothers (magically modified beholders) which rule over normal beholders and specialized abominations they spawned.
Kreen are very social insectoids, but live in networks of small groups, not hives — so there are basic roles, but no "castes". However, some Dark Sun tohr-kreen create lots of Super Soldier scouts, so modified that the term for them translates as "altered near-person " ( but scouts don't know this ).
Saurials do something like this via social symbiosis of several different species, naturally with different abilities. It's not a strictly binding limitation, but small fragile flier both naturally makes a great scout and courier, and is likely to prefer such an activity over any manual labour.
Abeils are literal Bee People with three castes: vassals (average citizens and basic infantry), soldiers (elite warriors), and queens.
The Hivebrood from Basic/Expert/etc. D&D combine this trope with The Virus .
At least one sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu (Delta Green?) divides the Mi-Go into three castes: warriors, workers and scientists.
In Talislanta , native insect-folk include the aggressive "sniper bugs" and nomadic "caravan bugs". These Bugs Are Different in that they're the size of ordinary insects, and are included more for exotic flavor than as potential opponents ... although the former are feuding with the pixie-like (and equally small) whisps, and the latter will trade tiny samples of rare plants for minute amounts of food.
Droyne in Traveller have several castes, including Leaders, Warriors (who grow larger than the others), and - unusually - Sports, who have the job description "Go out there and MINGLE!"
    Toys 
The Skrall in BIONICLE are a gender-segregated version of this. Among the males, there are the nameless "warrior" Skrall, which make up most of the population and serve as Mooks , then the Elite Skrall (Bigger, more powerful Skrall ), and finally the enormous Leader Class who are in charge of the Skrall society. The females live separately to the males, and it's implied that the only interaction between the genders consists of fighting or mating. The females also have Psychic Powers .
     Video Games  
In StarCraft , the majority of Zerg are warriors of different specializations, with zerglings as the basic warrior. Drones are workers, overlords are sub-command units (subservient to the cerebrates and the Overmind, or Kerrigan and the Brood Mothers in the second game) while hatcheries ("buildings" that are actually metamorphosed drones) produce larvae that become most of the various castes. The diversity is justified as the Zerg assimilate the DNA of other species.
In Age of Wonders , differences between units of the same species sometimes is obviously biological, at least for Draconians and Shadow Demons.
Pikmin . They're far cuter than most examples on this list, they're plant-based , and they're stuck on the bottom of the food chain without the player's guidance. With the player's guidance, they quickly fly up the food chain.
Antlions from Half-Life 2 are composed of several different castes. These including the standard Antlion, Workers (which tend the Antlion grubs and can spit corrosive acid), and Antlion Myrmidonts (which are huge and serve as miniboss monsters), and the Antlion King.
Rlaan in Vega Strike , despite their arthropoda appearance, are far from a hive. But they have "worker" and "defender" subspecies, with "administrator" sterile hybrids that have mental qualities of subspecies balanced. As a bonus , these aren't going to spawn any hereditary aristocracy.