Kids learn in grade school that honeybees “create” a new queen bee by feeding a larva royal jelly. A new study find that the young bee’s diet may be only part of what crowns her queen. The chemical makeup of a small “room” in the hive where she grows up also appears to play a key role.
Most honeybee larvae develop in identical six-sided chambers, or cells, inside the hive. But these common quarters aren’t quite fit for a queen. Actually, they aren’t big enough. So when a hive needs a new queen, worker bees develop some larger peanut-shaped cells. The workers then put a fertilized egg in each of these special rooms and feed it a nutritious substance commonly called royal jelly.
Scientists Say: Larva
Boris Baer is an entomologist, or insect biologist, at the University of California, Riverside. As a home beekeeper, he’s spent years observing his own hives. Many people learn as kids that feeding a young bee royal jelly is what turns a commoner into the queen. But Baer was also curious about the queen’s growth chamber. “Could [this] cell itself contribu...
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