A study of royal jelly, the creamy, thick secretion used to feed honey bee larvae and groom queens, has been discovered to have a powerful effect on genes and scientists now know how to mimic its effects, which will be give them an invaluable new technology to help make resistant bee strains.

All newly-born larvae in the bee colony receive initially a small amount of the jelly, but if a queen is needed, one selected hatchling will be fed an exclusive diet of royal jelly: in this way, a queen is made, not born, while the other young bees are condemned to a life of drudgery. Now a study published in Science solves the mystery of why eating royal jelly leads honeybee larvae to become queens instead of workers.