How Honeybees Defy Gravity with Royal Jelly to Raise Queens
The female sex in honeybees (Apis spp.) comprises a reproductive queen and a sterile worker caste. Nurse bees feed all larvae progressively with a caste-specific food jelly until the prepupal stage. Only those larvae that are exclusively fed a large amount of royal jelly (RJ) develop into queens. RJ is a composite secretion of two…