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If passing on one's genes is the whole point of natural selection then why is it that honey bees work to pass on the genes of their queen?

The answer is all to do with the way bees reproduce.

Before the queen lays her eggs she is fertilized by several males called drones.

She stores their sperm in her body but withholds it when laying the eggs of male bees in order to produce males that will carry only her genes.

When she lays eggs that will produce female workers she fertilizes the eggs by releasing some of the stored sperm.

When one of these females is occasionally allowed to develop into a new queen, the old queen and her sister workers will leave to start a new colony.

The net result of this system is that the female workers - and their nieces by their new sister queen - are very closely related.

In other words they share a high proportion of common genes. So when the sterile workers labour away to help the queen pass on her genes to next generation, they are actually labouring on behalf of their own genes.

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