• Question: what is the most interesting fact about honey bees

    Asked by MMC to Roberto on 11 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Roberto

      Roberto answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      This is a very difficult question because there are a lot of honeybee facts I love.
      But if I need to pick one, in particular, would be the way how a larva becomes a queen bee.
      Worker bees and queen bees are the only female bees in a colony, then you have the drones which are the male part.
      So, genetically worker and queen are identical, there is no difference in their larvae after hatching, but if you look at a queen bee she is definitively bigger than a worker and also live much longer, so how does happen that starting from two identical larvae we can obtain a queen bee or a worker bee?
      The secret relies on the type of food the queen larvae are feed on. It is a super protein food, with some mysterious molecule that science is not been able to identify yet. Nevertheless, larva feed on this particular food, called Royal Jelly, in 16 days become a beautiful queen bee, whereas the same larva if feed on pollen and nectar after 21 days become a worker bee (which in my opinion still beautiful as well).
      Cool, isn’t?

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