Queen Bees: A Colony-Crafted Path to Royalty
New research shows honeybee queens are shaped by a colony’s engineering, not just royal jelly. Young worker bees build specialized, heat-retentive queen chambers from unique wax and, through a dedicated group called queen cell builders, actively nurture future queens. Even with the same diet, larvae raised in queen wax develop better than those in worker wax, underscoring that the environment and social structure are key to queen development and colony reproduction.