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However, specialization of the ant type (though much less extreme) was recently discovered for the first time in a bee species1. The species is Tetragonisca angustula, known to Brazilians as Jataí, and members of the species are small and stingless. The researchers noticed that, given the short 20-day lifespan of an average worker, guards station themselves at the hive entrance for an unusual amount of time. While honeybee workers guard the entrance for only a single day in their sequence of jobs, Jataí guards stay for at least five. Combined with the observation that guards appear larger than foragers (the other, larger group of bees), this led them to hypothesize that guards are a separate caste.
