Eusocial insects
- A Rustle in the Grass: Averted, in a roundabout way. The worker and soldier ants are referred to with male pronouns despite the real thing being sterile, wingless females. However, later in the book the Queen relates the mythologized history of the ants - males became too aggressive, greedy and arrogant, so the Lord of the Stars punished them by making them only useful for breeding and giving all other roles in their society to the females. The females became "masculine even in name".
- Sonic the Hedgehog - Recurring Characters: Charmy is a male bee, but he has a stinger.
- The Bees: Averted. Aside from the level of sentience displayed by the bees, the novel is an accurate portrayal of roles within a hive, including the vast majority being female and the few males treated well but born only to breed.
- The First Men in the Moon: the Grand Lunar and the common worker Selenites are referred to as male despite being said to be similar to ants. Male ants are simply drones for procreation and usually die after fertilizing the queen. Of course, these are aliens.
- Dexter's Laboratory: If this is the case, it would be a case of mistaken Insect Gender-Bender, as males have few duties beyond laying around and mating, while worker ants are female.
- Bee Movie: They're supposed to be female, too, so don't worry too much about it.
- Aqua: "Bumble Bees" uses bees and pollination as a metaphor for sex and faithfulness. It has Lene, the female singer, singing about being a flower, while René, the male singer, plays the part of the bee. In reality, it is the female bees who go out and pollinate flowers.
- Bug Fables: The game tends to avoid this with its portrayals of social insect hierarchies... save for male bees and wasps. Bee and wasp drones don't have stingers in real life, but drones like Zasp, Reeves, and Crisbee all have them. Similarly, the Wasp Kingdom's military seems to be mostly male-dominated. While the stinger issue can likely be explained as both a quirk developed through the "Day of Awakening" as well as an out-of-universe way to make the Wasp King's status as a fake wasp more noticeable, the same can't be said about all the male soldier wasps.
- Jet Force Gemini: Most of the Ant-like soldier drones, including the default blue variant, are identified as female in the multiplayer mode as well as Vela's disguise. The larger termite looking drones are identified as male.
- Jump Start: Averted in Jump Start Animal Adventures. The leafcutter worker ants are explicitly portrayed as female and even sing an Educational Song about their lives called, "Hey Little Sister."
- King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!: Graham encounters a colony of ants led by King Antony.
- MadMaze: Averted with the Insectidae. Males exist solely to become the queen's primary mating sources and, after 100 years of matrimony, be killed in some gruesome fashion for her amusement.
- Parsnip: Parsnip calls the bee "Mister" and the bee doesn't say otherwise.
- Sword of the Stars: The Hivers subvert this; their social structure is very similar to ants, if ants were sentient.
- The Bug Pond: Largely subverted. The local ant colony is depicted as mostly female.
- Demon Street: Averted, all the giant ants staffing the archives are female.
- True Facts: Worker ants are sometimes referred to with male names and male pronouns.
- A Bug's Life: A film about a male worker ant, from a colony of male and female worker ants. (In real life, worker ants are all female.) Also, Princess Atta gets together with said male worker ant, rather than a winged drone.
- Antz: In real life, female ants make up the vast majority of any given colony. Male ants exist solely to fertilize new queens, and usually die shortly afterwards. Male ants also have wings, so all the guys should have looked like the "scouts" like Colonel Cutter.
- Bee Movie:
- Male mosquitoes don't drink blood (and females only drink it so they can get the protein to make eggs)
- Male bees don't sting. The stinger is a modified ovipositor that only female worker bees have. On top of that, there's no such thing as a male worker. In a beehive (as well as an anthill and a wasp's nest), all of the grunt work is done by infertile females. This includes pollinating, which the movie shows male bees doing. Really, the only purpose of a male bee in real life is to mate with the queen, then die.
- Bitsy Bears: The Bitsy Bears attempt to trick Bramble with a 'Bee King' balloon rather than a 'Bee Queen'.
- Gallavants: Unlike real ants, both male and female Gallavants contribute to society.
- Plan Bee: Played straight; the film features a male worker bee as its protagonist.
- Pokémon: Generation IV - Turtwig to Bronzong: Worker Combee are males instead of sterile females. Most likely because a more realistic hive of Combee would be a hassle for programmer and player alike.note
Other insects
- Eat Them Alive: Slayer, the largest and most voracious mantis, is a male. So says Dyke, anyway. In real life it is the female mantis that is usually biggest, strongest and more voracious.
- Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: Surprisingly, averted. The mosquito who buzzes in people's ears is female; since only females drink blood, it makes sense that a mosquito that ends up being swatted would be female.
- The Trash Pack: Blob Moz is a male blood-sucking mosquito.
- Private Snafu: Averted with the bloodsucking mosquitoes in "It's Murder She Says" as they are female as in real life, but played straight with the titular male bloodsucking mosquito in "Target Snafu," and "Private Snafu vs Malaria Mike" as male mosquitoes only feed on fruit and nectar off plants.
- Pokémon: Ultra Beasts: It's based on a mosquito and has a very masculine design, but in real life, only female mosquitos suck blood. Justified, though, because it's an alien abomination that only looks like a mosquito.
- Pathfinder Other Deities: A blood-sucking male mosquito.
Both
- The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast: Zig-Zagged Trope. Lizzie Bee is correctly portrayed as a female worker (although the book maintains human gender stereotypes by dressing her as a milkmaid, complete with panniers, presumably of nectar). On the other hand, Harold the Herald is a male gadfly who likes "a morning cup of blood". (The "Nature Notes" at the back of the book correct this.)
- Video Game/Bugdom: The ants are ruled over by a king, and the beehive has a number of drone bees who act as muscley guards. On the other hand, the blood-sucking mosquitoes are stated to be all female.
- The Ant Bully:
- The queen is female and huge, as queen ants are, but the other ants are bigendered — worker ants are exclusively female in real life.
- The Glow-worm is a male. Glow-worms are actually all females — their male counterparts are the winged fireflies.
