Beekeepers always believed a queen bee was made by feeding a larva royal jelly and you get royalty. But research published in Nature suggests there's more to the story. Chinese researcher Kai Wang and colleagues found that special worker bees build queen cells from a unique wax that differs from ordinary honeycomb. When young queens were raised in worker-bee wax instead along with royal jelly, they grew smaller and survived less well. The surprise? A future queen is shaped not only by what she eats, but also by the home built with special wax where the queen develops.
Growing Home - Queen Bees
