People have long peered into beehives and seen a model for human society. There is much to admire – the work ethic, the cooperation, the selflessness.
But a hive could equally be seen as a product of a repressive class system, even a tyranny. Because some bees are more equal than others.
By any standard, bees are unusual animals. The vast majority of hive members – female workers – will never produce their own offspring. Instead, they work tirelessly to help another female – the queen – produce hers. The system only works because the queen is usually the workers’ mother (or close relative), which means that the workers’ genes are still handed down, if via a more circuitous route. Meanwhile, the division of labour between reproductive and physical duties makes the production line more efficient.
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Queens are made, not born. Any fertilised egg has the potential to become either a queen or a worker (males, known as drones, develop from unfertilised eggs). Its destiny is determined by how it is raised. A worker bee is reared in one of the many thousands of identical, hexagonal, wax-walled compartments of the honeycomb. A queen, on the other hand, develops in a spacious brood chamber called a queen cell, which bulges out from the honeycomb.
Developing queens and workers also differ in terms of diet. Immediately after hatching, larvae of both types are fed with royal jelly, a secretion from glands on the heads of adult worker bees. Larvae destined to become workers are given royal jelly for only a couple of days, then are switched to a concoction of pollen and honey called ‘bee bread’. Future queens are fed exclusively on royal jelly throughout their development.
Royal jelly contains proteins that are highly influential in the developmental process. They are thought to tweak the ‘volume’ of certain genes, resulting in anatomical and behavioural differences between queens and workers.
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Once they emerge as adults from their cells, most queens will leave their natal hive, with a portion of the workers, to found their own colonies. But if the resident queen is getting old, young ones may stick around and fight amongst themselves – often to the death – for the privilege of replacing her.
Royal jelly itself has come to be seen as an elixir of youth, perhaps because of the relatively long lives of queen bees (up to several years), and it is harvested from queen cells and added to cosmetics and dietary supplements. Its rejuvenating properties are far from proven and it’s probably fair to say that the bees make better use of it.
Main image: Getty
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