Worker bees are the first line of defense when it comes to removing contamination in honeybee colonies, but a queen has her ways, too.
A honeybee queen facing chronic exposure to pesticides will take up that contamination and pass it along to her eggs, a process researchers call maternal offloading.
The findings, which document for the first time the extent a queen will go to survive, are published in the journal Current Biology. Research was led by the University of California, Davis.
