A once-powerful monarch, weakened by illness, is overthrown by her previously loyal subjects. But in honey bee colonies, such ...

The simply named and intriguingly effective royal jelly is what separates queen bees from the rest. These lucky bees are selected by the colony during the larval stage and coated in the milky, ...

Defying gravity: A special mixture of proteins in the larval food of bees ensures that future queen larvae survive. Surprisingly this has less to do with nourishment than with gravity. The special ...

In honeybee society, the monarch doesn’t break bread with the plebes. Even as a larva, the queen bee gets the exact same specially prepared dish delivered to her regularly by “nurse” bees, and in time ...

Honeybee larvae develop into queen bees if they are fed large quantities of a food called royal jelly. But royal jelly does more than determine whether a larva becomes a queen: it also keeps her ...