Male bees come from unfertilized eggs, so they have mothers but no fathers. Females come from fertilized eggs, so they have parents of both sexes. This produces an interesting pattern: The number of males in a given generation equals the number of females in the succeeding generation. And the number of females in a given generation equals the number of females in the succeeding two generations:
 |
| Genealogy of a male bee, beginning with his "mom" at the bottom level of the chart above (which is the second generation going backwards). |
So the total number of bees, male and
female, (but not counting siblings) in generation n is the Fibonacci number F(n).
W. Hope-Jones discovered the relationship
in 1921; this example is from Thomas Koshy’s “Fibonacci and Lucas Numbers With
Applications”, 2001.
Reference:
David
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