Worker bees build "royal palace" for their queen

Honey bee queens originate from the same fertilized eggs as worker bees. So how does a bee become queen - with the responsibility of being the colony's sole reproducer - rather than just another worker? Until now, scientists believed this occurred solely because the chosen bee was fed a special diet.

New research indicates that another crucial factor is at play: the nature of the wax chamber constructed for her by the group of worker bees, all female. Although these workers provide the future queen with a nutrient-rich substance called royal jelly, which they secrete, the larval development chamber they construct for her also has unique physical and chemical qualities.

"A royal diet means nothing without a royal palace," said Kai Wang, a scientist at the Apicultural Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and one of the leaders of the study published in the journal Nature.

Most of a bee hive is built from wax secreted by workers and molded into organized hexagonal cells, with some cells used to store food and others to raise young. But colonies also build a third type of chamber for future queens, similar to peanut shells, that hang from the honeycombs. Long noted by beekeepers as signs of swarming or queen replacement, these chambers were often treated as passive containers.

"Our study shows that this is actually an active and highly sophisticated 'smart incubator,'" Wang said.

Bees move between queen cells in a honeycomb inside a hive, in this photo released at the National Botanical Garden in Beijing, China, on June 18, 2021, published on June 3, 2026 - Kai Wang/Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences/Handout via REUTERS
The study focused on a species called the European honey bee.

According to the researchers, the chamber built for the future queen offers a set of physical and chemical conditions that can help direct the development of the larva towards a more noble form. This wax is softer, melts at a higher temperature and releases a different chemical "scent."

The softer walls may give the growing larva room to expand, while the scents may act as hormonal triggers, the researchers said. Even with royal jelly, Wang said, larvae exposed to wax worker cells showed inferior queen development and much higher mortality, suggesting that they need the "smell and texture" of royal jelly to survive and transform.

The researchers also found that the bees building the queen cells had unusually high chest temperatures and distinct genetic activity.

"To mold this special high-melting wax, these young bees have to turn their bodies into little 'living ovens,' heating their chests to more than 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit), as if they have a fever," Wang said.

Wang said these bees are not a permanently specialized caste, but rather "ordinary, flexible young workers" who take on temporary emergency work, with short-term changes in gene expression that help them process wax. Wang called them "ultimate multitaskers" because while they build queen cells, they continue to perform everyday hive tasks, such as sharing food with their nestmates and inspecting other cells.

What surprised Wang most was that the "deeply rooted dogma" of nutritional determinism - the idea that feeding royal jelly to a larva is the only secret to raising a queen - was incomplete.

The study, however, still does not identify the precise appearance of the wax in question.

Bees move between queen cells in a honeycomb inside a beehive, in this photo released at the National Botanical Garden in Beijing, China, on June 18, 2021, published on June 3, 2026 - Kai Wang/Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences/Handout via REUTERS
Wang said the next step is to find the molecular switch: "What specific chemical odor or physical touch actually tells the honey bee larva's DNA? queen: 'You are the queen'."

Similar effects may exist in other social insects, Wang added. Termite mounds and paper wasp nests may do more than shelter their occupants, and the intricate wax nests of stingless bees may hide similar secrets about how colonies control their development.

Beyond biology, the work could eventually help beekeepers raise healthier queens, said Boris Baer, professor of pollinator health at the University of California, Riverside, and one of the study leaders.

Queen production is fundamental to modern beekeeping, and healthy queens are necessary to maintain healthy colonies, Baer said. Managed honey bees pollinate more than 80 important agricultural crops, and Baer said a better understanding of how colonies naturally produce high-quality queens could help support more resilient bee populations at a time when beekeepers in the United States and elsewhere are reporting substantial colony losses.

For Wang, the findings reinforce the idea that the bee colony is a "superorganism", where bees collectively mold a common larva to become its future mother. As he himself said: "Eating well is important, but living in the perfect home is what really changes your destiny."

Source: CNN