Excuse the space in that link. Let’s try again:
[Note: I tried to fix the link by imbedding it. -manhattan]
[Edited by manhattan on 07-21-2000 at 05:44 PM]
Damn. Manhattan, you might report another bug with Vbulletin’s URL treatment. I definitely did NOT have a space between the h and the m of .html. Vbulletin is seeing fit to put it there.
If you want to follow that link, remove the space.
Well, I’ll be damned. There was no space when I went in to edit it either. Thanks for the catch, and sorry the link didn’t work.
Right - it’s theoretical. Although it doesn’t happen, you can figure out what would happen if they did mate and have children. It’s quite easy, really.
As to jb_farley’s question, sex determination varies widely throughout the animal kingdom. People are familiar with humans’ XY system and assume that all animals do it that way, but they don’t. There’s a marine worm, for example, that becomes male if the larva lands on a female, and becomes female if it doesn’t. Both genders are genetically identical. In fruit flies, it’s the ratio of X’s to Y’s that determines gender, not the number of each. This leads to interesting genders like metafemale, metamale, and intergender. But anyway, back to bees.
yabob explained it quite well. If an egg doesn’t get fertilized, it becomes a male. If it does, it becomes female. If you want to get more detailed than that, we’d have to get into the molecular biology of it, on which I’m not qualified to comment. The point is, given the wide range of gender determination mechanisms around, this shouldn’t be too much of a shock.