Class in the honey bee society

In honey bee society, a few larvae are chosen as queen bees and the majority of them are worker bees, that is the study just published in the Journal of Proteome Research.

Students are often taught that there is only one queen in a pack of bees and it grows from jelly-fed larvae. The remaining larvae develop into male and female worker bees. Although queen bees and worker bees have nearly identical genes, their fate can vary greatly.

According to Dr. Jianke Li and colleagues, queen bees are usually large in size and specialized in reproduction, while small worker bees participate in activities to protect their herd. Queen bees live 1-2 years while worker bees only exist for no more than 6-7 weeks. To gather more information, the scientists looked at the proteins inside the larval cells intended to become queen and worker bees.

They found that there were important differences in early life, in the activity of mitochondrial proteins, the structures that make up energy for cells. These differences include changes in the amount of protein produced in cells and their activity. In queen bee larvae, proteins are much more flexible than worker bees. According to the researchers, this suggests that proteins that have metabolic enhancement activities are important in class identification.

Earlier, the study of Mr. Masaki Kamakura, a specialist of entomology at the Center for Biotechnology Research in Toyoma (Japan), identified a protein called royalactin which is the main agent in the isolation of larvae. Honey bees to take on the role of queen.