Parthenogenesis is a natural form of asexual reproduction most commonly found in lower organisms and plants. Sometimes known as the virgin birth, parthenogenesis involves the growth of an individual without fertilization. Discovered in the 18th century by naturalist and philosopher Charles Bonnet, parthenogenesis is a progressive evolutionary strategy that some organisms used to maintain a colony. Just as organisms that use parthenogenesis have benefits, such as reproducing without the need for male gametes, there are costs, such as decreased genetic variation. In the complex eusocial organization of honey bees, there are three social classes: the queen bee, the worker bee. bees and drones. The queen bee, as the name suggests, occupies the superior position in the colony. The queen bee lays all the eggs in the colony, being the only bee with a fully developed set of ovaries and having lifelong fertility (Back Yard Beekeepers Association n.d.). After a single mating flight, the queen has mated with a few male drones, she stores the sperm to later fertilize some of the eggs. Fertilized eggs develop into female worker bees, and eggs that develop without fertilization produce male bees. Due to the high maintenance of the colony and its products, such as honey, most of the bees in a hive are workers. These worker bees perform many different tasks, not including reproduction, which is reserved only for the queen. Male drones are reserved for mating with the queen bee. After copulation, the drone dies due to its barbed sexual organ (Back Yard Beekeepers Association nd). Scientists have been perplexed as to how this multifaceted organization is maintained in the middle of the article......and genetic factors play a role in sex determination (Slobodchikoff and Daly 1971). However, in some other Hymenoptera, parthenogenesis occurs via thelytoky parthenogenesis. There is a subspecies of domestic bee, the Cape bee (Apis mellifera capensis), known to exhibit thelytoky, the production of diploid females from unfertilized eggs, eliminating the paternal genome (Heimpel and de Boer 2008). In the case of the Cape bee, the queen bee determines whether the eggs are haploid or diploid (Oldroyd et al. 2008). Through thelytokous parthenogenesis, the Cape queen can produce clones of itself (Oldroyd et al. 2008). Undergoing a different form of parthenogenesis gives Cape bees the advantage of creating males capable of mating with other queens (Oldroyd et al. 2008), involving an individual for reproduction, and reduced loss of genes (Slobodchikoff and Daly 1971).