Honey Bee Hierarchy-
how can we distinguish between the Queen and the Worker bees?
Honey bees have very complicated sex life! They live in hives contain tens of thousands of bees, usually offspring of the same mother, known as the queen. Among these offsprings, some are haploid male, meaning they are produced with only the half of the genetic material from mother with no involvement of a male bee or drown. Others are female worker bees who are diploid meaning they have to be fertilized with a drown to obtain two copies of the genetic material.
Both of the queen and the worker bees are diploid female and require fertilization from a drown. What makes them different is the food they are fed as larvae. For the first few days of their lives, they are both fed with royal jelly, a liquid produced by worker bee. The all larva are fed with pollen and honey after the first few days and develop into worker bees with the exception the queen-to-be, they are continuously fed with royal jelly which allow them to grow large in size and enable them to produce up to 2000 eggs/day.
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