>What would happen if a unfertilized drone larva is fed a continuous supply of Royal jelly?

What happens if you feed royal jelly to a pregnant rat? 

>With the discovery of vitamin E, it was thought that possibly royal jelly owed its astonishing sex-differentiating property to the presence of large
>quantities of this vitamin. Hill & Burdett [1932] performed experiments to test this interesting hypothesis and claimed that if pregnant rats on vitamin
>E-deficient diets were fed 50 mg. of royal jelly per day, it would prevent resorption of the embryos. In 1936, Melampy & Mason subjected the above work >to critical examination and found several possible sources of error in both the technique.and conclusions of Hill & Burdett. Melampy & Mason repeated the
>experiments under better-controlled conditions and found that even as much as 1 g. of royal jelly fed daily throughout the period of gestation does not >supply sufficient vitamin E to permit the completion of a normal pregnancy in E-deficient female rats. This finding has been thrice confirmed [Schoorl, >1936;Evans, et al. 1937; Haydak & Palmer, 1938]. It would appear, therefore, that some nutritional factor other than vitamin E is responsible for the > >production and maintenance of queen honey bees.

>The chemical nature of royal jelly
>GF Townsend, CC Lucas - Biochemical Journal, 1940 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1265395/pdf/biochemj00991-0016.pdf


In case you're wondering what they really eat.

>The study of nutrition of drones has been neglected and only recently have some observations and analyses been made.
>Young drones (1 to 8 days old) are fed mainly by younger workers with food which resembles modified worker jelIy-a mixture of glandular
>secretions, pollen, and honey. In some cases, food for drones is derived from the honey stomach of feeding workers. This type of feeding is followed by a
>period in which the drones feed themselves on honey from the combs, with occasional feeding by workers. The food of flying drones (12 to 26 days
>old) consists mostly of honey which they take from cells. Only rarely do they receive it from the workers.  


>Honey bee nutrition
>MH Haydak - Annual review of entomology, 1970 - annualreviews.org

> http://194.47.52.113/janlars/partnerskapalnarp/ekonf/20130516/Haydak1970.pdf

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