• Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    My understanding is that while they can make a new queen under the radar, hypothetically, the slightly different scent of her eggs/haploid larva is seen as a hostile invasion and it’s quickly dispatched by loyalists, which is why non-main-queen offspring rarely happens.

    Something like because they are all essentially genetically identical, they all have the same pheromones, but the next generation won’t.