Page 74 - The Miracle of the Honeybee

72 THE MIRACLE OF THE HONEYBEE

Is He Who creates like him who does not create? So will you not pay
heed? (Surat an-Nahl: 17)
[God is] the Originator of the heavens and Earth. When He decides
on something, He just says to it, “Be!” and it is. (Surat al-Baqara: 117)

The Queen’s Authority Secretion
Under normal conditions, the worker bees do not construct any cells
for queens. The presence of the queen in the hive prevents this. Only in ex-
ceptional circumstances does this situation change. To understand the
conditions under which the workers will begin to prepare a new royal cell
when a queen is already present, we should examine the secretion emitted
by the queen.
All of the worker bees in the hive are female, yet unlike the queen, they
are unable to lay eggs since their reproductive organs are not developed.
This was an interesting cause for speculation among scientists for many
years. We have already seen how the female larvae emerge as either
queens or workers due to how much royal jelly they are fed during the lar-
val stage. In fact, the workers too have reproductive organs when they are
first hatched. Yet these never develop and become suitable for egg-laying.
Scientists researched the reasons for this and eventually found the answer
they were looking for.
The answer lies in a chemical secreted by the queen, which chemical
not only informs the other bees that she, the queen, is alive and well, but
also sterilizes all the other females in the colony. This chemical from the
queen’s mandibular glands also allows members of the colony to recog-
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nize one another. The formula of this chemical is:

O H
9-keto-(E)-2-decenoic acid CH3-C(CH2)5 C=CCOOH

H

The queen substance’s formula (Thomas A. Sebeok, Animal Communication, p. 222.)