But wait, there's more

The Cape bee (Apis mellifera capensis) is unique among honeybees in
that workers can lay eggs that instead
of developing into males develop into females via thelytokous
parthenogenesis. We show that this ability
allows workers to compete directly with the queen over the production
of new queens. Genetic analyses
using microsatellites revealed that 23 out of 39 new queens produced
by seven colonies were offspring of
workers and not the resident queen. Of these, eight were laid by
resident workers, but the majority were
offspring of parasitic workers from *other colonies*. The parasites
were derived from several clonal lineages
that entered the colonies and successfully targeted queen cells for
parasitism. Hence, these parasitic
workers had the potential to become genetically reincarnated as
queens. Of the daughter queens laid by the
resident queen, three were produced asexually, suggesting that queens
can 'choose' to produce daughter
queens clonally and thus have the potential for genetic immortality.

-- 
"Cheating honeybee workers produce royal offspring"
Lyndon A. Jordan, Michael H. Allsopp, Benjamin P. Oldroyd,
Theresa C. Wossler and Madeleine Beekman
Proc. R. Soc. B (2008) 275, 345–351

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