More on small bees:

When larvae of the three castes of honey bees are starved under natural or laboratory conditions, some produce dwarf adults. The various-sized adult drones reared did not appear to differ greatly in gross external appearance. However, the smaller worker adults had proportionately longer wings than the larger ones, and Daly found that certain gross proportions of the body of worker bees reared from underfed larvae were similar to those of the stingless bees (Meliponini)

Undersized worker adults have also been reared under natural conditions even when larvae have been fed continuously throughout larval life. These occurred when pollen and nectar became scarce, the colony was diseased, the brood was reared early in the spring, or the colonies were low in numbers of workers. The sizes and weights of adults are also affected by the ages of the nurse bees, the ratio of the number of nurse bees to the number in the brood being reared, and the size of the cell for workers and for drones. Probably every factor above affects the adult size and weight by altering, directly or indirectly, the quantity or quality of the brood given to the larva

Jay, S. C. (1964). Starvation studies of larval honey bees. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 42(3), 455-462.



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