"An example: the default for any fertilized bee egg is to become a drone.

???  I am confused..  I thought fertilized default is female??  Unfertilized
male???

"That feminized egg then can (still
without any genetic change whatsoever) develop either into a queen (the
default) or a worker."  

And this is even more confusing,  up until today my understand is this is a
dietary issue, better and correct diet allowing the development to be
completed,  or in the case of workers slightly underdeveloped.??

Instead of admonishing us for not reading, perhaps one should be concerned about typos. The above is no doubt a typo. An unfertilized egg becomes a drone. And the statement that there is no genetic change, is overly simplistic. Conventional genetics might support that statement, but modern genetics would not. The actual bee is the result of the interplay between the genome and substances in the food, which switch important genetic components on and off. This is an epigenetic effect which is called DNA methylation. 

The result is a distinct and permanent difference which we see in the queen or worker. The developing bees are guided down two different developmental pathways and are essentially as different as male and female. The queen has none of the important features of the worker: the glands to produce brood food, wax, the ability to forage and carry nectar and pollen, etc. To state that the workers are undeveloped is erroneous, the queen and the worker are both fully developed but different with different features. 

Further complicating matters is the fact that there are two castes of workers, short lived and long lived. DNA methylation no doubt plays a role in this distinction, through the composition of the food fed to the developing larvae. So, the same genome can produce a male, queen, short lived worker or long lived worker, as well as intercastes under unusual circumstances. Also, some varieties (Cape Bee) of workers can produce female eggs despite being unfertilized. Lastly, there is the phenomenon of the diploid drone, which is male despite being fertilized. (None of this is any of the popular books on bees)

PLB

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