New research finds evidence that it is the worker bee, not the queen, that receives special treatment by the nurses:

Quoted Material:

Analyses have revealed specific differences in miRNA composition and concentrations between worker and queen bee adults, pupae and larvae, and we therefore investigated the small RNA content in royal and worker jelly. The results show that worker jelly is far more abundant in miRNA types and concentration than royal jelly.

These observations all seem to imply that it is the worker program that needs to be actively switched on, and, thus, that it is the prospective worker larva that must receive a specific environmental signal (nutritional or other) to activate this program.

 The worker and queen bee developmental fates can be understood in terms of different development programs that are encoded in the bee genome and have been designed from various components derived from its Hymenopteran ancestry.

From an evolutionary perspective it also appears reasonable to assume that the queen is closer to the normal insect female, and that the production of a specialized, sterile worker must be a highly costly and very risky strategy that requires tight regulatory control.

In conclusion, we have presented data that are compatible with a role for miRNAs in the larval feed in honey bee caste determination. The most likely origin of the miRNAs are the hypopharyngeal secretions produced by nurse bees, and the data suggest an overall reduction in the entire miRNA complement in royal jelly compared to worker jelly. Interpreted in this fashion, determination of the worker bee caste may, at least in part, owe to a ‘‘maternal-like’’ effect executed by the transfer of miRNAs that are highly expressed in the adult nurses or their hypopharyngeal glands, to the young larvae, which thereby ‘‘inherit’’ both developmental programs 

Citation: Guo X, Su S, Skogerboe G, Dai S, Li W, et al. (2013) Recipe for a Busy Bee: MicroRNAs in Honey Bee Caste Determination. PLoS ONE 8(12): e81661.

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