Queen bees emerge from special wax chambers
cen.acs.org83 points by gmays 12 hours ago
83 points by gmays 12 hours ago
The chemicals in their nearby environment are what make the embryos develop into Queen bees. It makes one wonder what sort of nearby chemical environments do to human embryo development.
Since human fetuses are usually encapsulated within the womb of an adult woman, they’re far more insulated from arbitrary chemical environments than bee larvae. But of course we know of many cases where chemicals make it through the mother’s body and into the fetus’s immediate environment, affecting its development: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/fetal-alcohol...
> arbitrary chemical environments
Temperature is another factor. IIRC amphibian embryos have to develop in a wide range of temperatures (an egg might be stuck to a leaf), so their cells have many more variants of proteins, where each variant is most-effective in a different temperature band.
In contrast, a mammal blastocyst or embryo already has the multicellular mother keeping temperature within a narrower band.
Another interesting example is sea turtles, whose eggs are in a relatively stable environment (sand), but its temperature changes year to year. Based on the temperature of the eggs, you see a different distribution of offspring sex.
I guess having just read about the positive impact the bees have to develop into Queen bees I was wondering if there are positive chemicals a human female could produce to give better than average outcomes.
If you think fetal alcohol syndrome is bad, check what the consequences of lead poisoning are, knowing that just about every state has mass-contaminated their population with lead and then refused to help with the consequences.
You can avoid fetal alcohol syndrome. You cannot realistically avoid fetal lead poisoning.
Well you can't really undo lead poisoning. Nor microplastics, etc. Once those have gotten into a population that's just how the population's gonna be. So it makes sense that there's nothing to do about a lead-poisoned population other than stop adding more.
I’ve always wondered what or how queen bees were made. It’s almost as they were a different insect.
For a really wild ride, read about naked mole rats. The only mammals that have a similar queen setup.
They are deeply weird in many ways.
Fascinating. Sharing with a beekeeper friend, thank you