/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3229699
Glad you enjoyed reading my answer. Birth defects are fairly common among bees; they go for a quantity over quality approach after all. (At her peak in May, the queen is laying one or two thousand eggs per day.) A feeble queen may have offspring that are malformed because her body cannot properly produce eggs, but the most common cause of birth defects among bees would be parasitic infection.
There are some bee diseases that kill the larvae outright (such bacteria as foulbrood and viruses as chalkbrood and sacbrood), but more common pests are things like the Varroa mite, which sucks hemolymph ("blood") from larvae and from adult bees, stunting their growth and weakening them unduly to the point of shortening their lifespan. Affected bees commonly have small, misshapen abdomens (the vital organs of insects are mostly in the abdomen), but I've seen interference with the wings as well. Tracheal mites can also cause deformation; they are similar in modus operandi to Varroa mites, but are much smaller and suck blood from within the tracheae (airways) of adult bees, rather than sitting on the exteriors of larvae and adults as do Varroa. A fungal protozoan known as nosema infests adult bees as well, causing intestinal problems and interfering with muscle control. (However, since tracheal mites and nosema disease affect adult bees rather than larvae, they do not cause birth defects per se, but rather developmental defects.)