Queen bee and equal opportunities

Have you ever thought about how a beehive chooses a queen? 

They don’t. 

Potentially any of the eggs or larvae can become a queen. They are not specific eggs that are chosen. They are just any egg from the same gene pool. Beehive is an equal opportunity community. Theoretically anyone can become a queen.  

Why doesn’t that happen?

The difference is feeding. Larvae that are chosen to become queen are fed royal jelly, which is better and more nutritious food. Larvae that are fed ‘bee bread’, less nutritious food, become workers. 

When a new queen is being chosen, worker bees choose not just one, but many eggs that are being fed royal jelly and have a potential to become a queen. However, only the one who hatches first and is able to kill its rivals, becomes a queen. 

I was reading a book ‘ Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind’ written by Yuval Harari and in the book he describes a sophisticated social system of beehives. The bee society did not strike me as a brilliant society on the whole, some people might scoff at the fact that women do the work and men just fulfill their destiny by waiting to copulate with the queen. But it did strike me with the fact that all the eggs have the same opportunities to develop into a leader. 

It is the same in academia (or a school), all young students who enter have an opportunity to thrive. However, not everyone is given the same chance. Some are fed royal jelly and others bee bread. This is the same thing with many workplaces.  

Research groups are vastly different. Some groups have copious amounts of grant money and they perform good research. Some groups are very nurturing and give great growing opportunities to their members. Some groups have absolutely brilliant minds who do not shy away from the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience. Sometimes, but not very often all these can be found in one place. 

This is the reason why it is important to choose the research group. Or workplace. Not just go where the opportunity arises. However, the places where all the good resources meet, are highly sought and often the competition is brutal. Like in a beehive, where a recently hatched queen needs to kill its rivals, otherwise it cannot become a queen. When there is a limited amount of resources (and there always is), the one with the most ambition will win, not necessarily the best one. 

In life, most of us do not want to rule the beehive and win Nobel prizes and invent new innovations. But we want to be fed nutritious food. We want the best nurturing possible and an opportunity to grow. In my opinion, this is the best thing anyone can look for in a research group or a workplace. 

Sometimes we want to be a worker bee and not a queen. Many people just want to have a job and for them, the family or hobbies are the priority. There is nothing wrong with that and a person who prioritizes the family is not a non-productive worker. They might still be very passionate scientists, love what they do and want to do it well, but they want to share their time with other commitments. 

We are all needed in the work of creating an efficient community. Some of us get to be queen bees, some are happy worker bees and some of us leave the nest to become a queen elsewhere. But we all deserve to be fed nutritious food and be nurtured so we have an opportunity to become whatever we want.