Workers do not have the ability to choose whether to be a queen or not. That choice is made for them when they are raised. A larva cannot feed itself royal jelly.
No, from the point of view of their genes they are given a signal, they get to choose whether to obey it, i.e., a hypothetical mutation that causes the larva to develop into a queen even if not fed royal jelly doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be hard to spontaneously happen.
No, from the point of view of their genes they are given a signal, they get to choose whether to obey it, i.e., a hypothetical mutation that causes the larva to develop into a queen even if not fed royal jelly doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be hard to spontaneously happen.