Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the effects of the different feeding patterns are not expressed until the larvae are at least
three days old.
This whole subject is immensely complex, and this chapter is designed as an
introduction only. What you need to remember, though, is that worker and queen bees
start out exactly the same and that different nutritional regimes cause them to differ
markedly. In effect, all fertilized eggs start out as potential queens. After three days
of development a change in diet for the majority of them forms the worker bees. The
others remain as queens.
Researching royal jelly
Recent research at the Australian National University may explain why eating royal
jelly causes honey-bee larvae to become queens instead of workers. Scientists from the
Research School of Biological Sciences at the university have discovered that a copious
diet of royal jelly flicks a genetic switch in young bees that determines whether they'll
become a queen or live a life of drudgery. They found that royal jelly seems to modify
chemically the bee's genome by a process called DNA methylation and disrupts the
expression of genes that turn young bees into workers.
When they 'silenced' a gene controlling DNA methylation without recourse to royal
jelly, they discovered that the larvae began to develop as queens with the associated
fertility, rather than as infertile workers. They believe this is the first time that DNA
methylation has been functionally implicated in insects. This molecular process is
common in vertebrates - including humans.
Replacing a queen
If the queen suddenly dies or is removed, there will be no eggs in queen cups to develop
into queens. The workers will then choose young larvae under three days old in worker
cells that already exist, draw out the cells, feed them as for queens and so produce
emergency queens.
There is much debate and research on how effective these queens are compared with
planned ones, but it is evident that the bees do not always choose the best larvae and
that some of these emergency queens are, at best, sufficient. This is something to
