system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do bees make royal jelly and how does it work? How does it make a queen instead of a worker?
gpt
Its secreted by a gland on worker bees. It's just a special nutient (and possibly hormone? Unclear) mix that they feed to larva. Those larva destined to be queens are fed lots of extra helly and actually fully submerged in it. This exposure serves as whats caused an epigenetic trigger. That means that it switches off certain genes and switches on others, causing the larva to develop into a queen instead of a worker.