Honeybee larvae develop into queen bees only when they are fed large quantities of a food known as royal jelly. But royal jelly does more than determine whether a larva becomes a queen: it also keeps her safely anchored to the roof of the structure, called a queen cell, in which she develops. Research published in Current Biology on March 15 explains the role that the pH of royal jelly plays in making the substance viscous enough to keep the queen-to-be from falling.