eli5: How exactly does the Royal Jelly turn an ordinary bee larvae into a Queen?

Question

eli5: How exactly does the Royal Jelly turn an ordinary bee larvae into a Queen?

In: 205

Answer 1

Royal jelly doesn’t turn ordinary bee larvae into queens. Larvae that aren’t fed royal jelly become workers because their ovaries shrivel.

Royal jelly has no detectable phenolic acids. In a test, bees reared with p-coumaric acid in their feed had significantly smaller ovaries than those reared *without* p-coumaric acid in their feed.

[Source.](https://www.wired.com/2015/09/royal-jelly-isnt-makes-queen-bee-queen-bee/)