To date it has been unclear exactly how the sex of a bee is determined. A research team comprising biologists and chemists has now identified a key gene and the molecular mechanism linked with it. They describe how this process is similar to a game involving two dice.

I found this article interesting because it discusses the science of how female and male bees are determined (beyond the male haploid and the female diploid).

Basically, there’s a protein and if a diploid bee has two different versions, it’s a girl because the two proteins can bind to each other to activate a sex-determining switch. And a male haploid bee will have one version, which is unable to activate the “female” switch so he stays male.

However, it suggests (if I understand the article right, and I may not) that it’s possible to have a diploid bee with two of the SAME versions of the sex-determining protein…which means it would be male because they can’t bind together to activate the “female” switch…but the bees do not allow such eggs to mature. So any potential “diploid male” egg basically is destroyed.

I do wonder if it’s actually cleared out by the bees themselves, or if it self-terminates due to some abnormality in growth?

I’d be really curious what would happen if you could successfully raise a diploid male bee to maturity. Could he mate with a queen successfully? Would the offspring be ok?

Here’s an older article about the same topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07052

Edit: Here’s the science paper the parent link is based on: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg4239