Bees can be a cruel relatives. The queen's children eat their eggs, worker bees with eggs and dine you. This activity can be frightening to people, but it makes the bees more affluent families.

Although worker bees are not mating, females lay the eggs remain unfertilized and if given the chance to develop into males. This is similar to wasps and ants. But many of these eggs may not survive. Each egg is eaten for the purpose of reducing the number of competitors on the gene.

Worker bees usually eat eggs cousins ​​when the mother queen mated with different males. In this species, most worker bees are siblings stepbrother, and some close to his brother (the son of the queen) than children (sons of other worker bees). Meanwhile, the baby stepbrother showed no mercy when its eating his nephew, to eliminate the stranger appeared in the group.

In these species have queens Loan steering, son of well being care worker bees less than 100 times the only species with a single father. The results also support the hypothesis of William Hamilton in 1964, according to which they are distantly related to each other treat caustic.