Fig. 1

Nutritional programming of postembryonic development in honey bees. a Newly hatched female larvae are multipotent and can develop either into short-lived functionally sterile workers or long-lived fertile queens depending on the feeding regime during larval growth. The entire queen development from a fertilised egg to an adult takes 16–17 days. Workers emerge as adults around 5 days later than queens¹⁶. The distinctiveness in neuronal development in the worker larvae may be associated with the early stages of building a sophisticated nervous system required for workers remarkable navigational skills and high mnemonic fidelity during adult life. b Larval feeding regimes act as an external cue that directs epigenetic programing of postembryonic development in a caste-specific manner via metabolic flux. Royal jelly activates pathways associated with the catabolism of proteins, carbohydrates and fats, as well as the major energy pathways. This can be observed as increased growth rates seen in queen larvae relative to that seen in larvae destined to become workers. This process is based on threshold adjustments occurring at several levels, including hormone levels and epigenomic modifications, until a point of no return is reached and development is committed to one phenotype