Fun with Science Club®


			Egg-eating bees serve their queen. Beth Tyler 06.01.01 Honeybees live together in colonies. They are also polyandrous. This means that the offspring in a colony are from one female, called the queen bee, who mates with many males outside her colony. The queen bee lays all the eggs, and the worker bees, all female, raise the eggs. Even though they are not supposed to, sometimes workers also lay eggs. Because worker bees are only supposed to raise the queen’s eggs, they should not knowingly raise a worker’s eggs. But can they tell the eggs apart? Some Scientists in Asia studying dwarf honeybees, Apis florea, wanted to know if other worker bees could tell the queen’s eggs apart from a worker’s eggs. They found twelve colonies in nature and moved them into one area to be studied. While moving, four of the colonies lost their queen, allowing workers in the colony to lay eggs. The scientists moved some workers’ eggs from the queen-less colonies into the colonies with queens. Then they observed what happened to the worker eggs. They discovered that worker bees ate other workers’ eggs. Sometimes the queen’s eggs are also eaten, but worker bee eggs were eaten much more often than queen eggs. As they hypothesized, the scientists discovered that worker bees can tell queen eggs apart from worker eggs, probably by a chemical the queen puts on her eggs. Knowing the eggs are not the queens, workers eat other worker’s eggs to prevent non-queen females from reproducing.

CLICK HERE for more information!


			Hallig, Luke A., Benjamin P. Oldroyd, Wandee Wattanachaiyingcharoen, Andrew B. Barron, Piyamas Nanork, and Siriwat Wongsiri. 2001. Worker policing in the bee Apis florea. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 49: 509-513.