A Vermin Queen is a colony of horrid, intelligent black beetles with the ability to assume the guise of a beautiful human or demihuman. It uses this disguise to waylay travelers in order to devour their flesh and steal their skin. When a vermin queen eats a living human, demihuman, or humanoid creature, another beetle is born to the colony. When the swarm gets too big to comfortably fit into a human skin, half of it splits off and becomes a new vermin queen. The mother swarm typically deposits the daughter swarm in the body of its next victim.

A vermin queen can freely change between humanoid and colony forms once per round. The touch of a vermin queen in either form paralyzes (much like a ghoul) and it never takes more than 1d4 points of damage from weapon attacks. While in colony form, a vermin queen fights just like an insect swarm.