Evolutionary Dead Ends: The Pluto Bee

The social structure of the modern, garden-variety honey bee is well known. There are three kinds of bee: the queen, whose job it is to pump out new bees, the drones, whose job it is to fertilize the queen, and the workers, whose job it is to ... well, do all the work. This arrangement has worked splendidly for centuries upon centuries, but it is not the only honey bee model Mother Nature ever tried. There was once another.

Pluto bees were very similar to modern honey bees in most respects. They had the standard-issue queen and workers, as per spec. There was one difference, however. Instead of drones, the pluto bees had ... plutos. Whereas the function of the drone is to fertilize the queen, the function of the pluto was to screw everybody.

Here's how it worked. The worker bees did their usual nectar-gathering and honey-making. Then the plutos siphoned the honey off into special honeycombs of their own, which were off limits to nonplutos. They ate it, accumulated it, bathed in it, and gambled it in the honey market. But they did not share it with any other bee.

This arrangement tended to starve the worker bees, and hives would begin to fail. When that happened, there would be much buzzing and flapping of wings, and the debate about solutions would begin. Some of the workers would suggest that the plutos contribute their share to the honey pot. (Such workers were known as "socialists.") However, all responsible parties agreed that wasteful worker bees were at the bottom of the problem. So negotiations would begin between the representatives of the plutos and the representatives of the workers over how much more honey should be taken from the workers. Worker reps also politely asked the plutos to kick in a bit from the pluto stash, but no one took this seriously. In the meantime, plutos would block the entrance to the hive so that no honey production at all could take place until a compromise had been reached.

A successful compromise would be achieved when all pluto demands had been met, and the workers had capitulated utterly. Then normalcy would be restored, meaning that the plutos could continue to suck up honey as if their species had no tomorrow.