Post by copperkid3 on Sept 2, 2015 23:00:23 GMT
For decades, scientists thought an excess of something special, a substance called royal jelly,
elevated a regular honey bee larva to a queen. New research suggests we had it backward:
It’s what future queens aren’t fed that matters.
www.wired.com/2015/09/royal-jelly-isnt-makes-queen-bee-queen-bee/
A developing queen bee is fed royal jelly exclusively—
not pollen and honey like her proletarian sisters.
Some describe withholding royal jelly from worker bees as nutritional castration.
These bees don’t get the special Food of the Gods. Or, perhaps, food of genetic monarchies.
And so, we thought, their ovaries shrivel, and they don’t become a queen.
It turns out, it’s the other way around.
Not feeding an immature queen pollen and honey
is what makes her royal, not her exclusive access to royal jelly.
