For honeybees, reproduction isn’t a simple question of mother and father.

Instead, researchers say honeybees’ offspring can be something of a mosaic.

A new study has discovered a honeybee that has both male and female tissue, and was born from two fathers, with no mother.

According to the researchers, the motherless bee was created through the fusion of two sperm cells – and, despite what would be expected from the process, it turned out to be female.

Honeybees are what’s known as haplodiploid, in which females arise from fertilized, diploid eggs, and males arise from unfertilized, haploid eggs. A new study has found that this can give rise to offspring with both male and female tissue

In a paper published to the journal Biology Letters, researchers from the University of Sydney have revealed new insight on the remarkable nature of honeybee 'gynandromorphs'.

Honeybees are what’s known as haplodiploid, in which females arise from fertilized, diploid eggs, and males arise from unfertilized, haploid eggs.

This form of reproduction means they’re capable of creating male and female offspring, as well as gynandromorphs.

Unlike hermaphrodites, which have male and female sex organs but are one gender, gynandromorphs contain both male and female tissue throughout the body.

The new study on the genome of 11 gyandromorph honeybees from one colony revealed most have normal sex organs.

Five of the bees in the study had normal ovaries, while three had those resembling that of the queen.

One had normal male sex organs. But, the team also found that two had only partial sex organs.

In a paper published to the journal Biology Letters, researchers from the University of Sydney have revealed new insight on the remarkable behaviour of honeybee gynandromorphs, which contain both male and female tissue

And, that’s not all.

Of the batch, several of the gynandromorph bees had more than one father.

In the past, it’s been suggested that gyandromorph bees are the result of mutations that occur after multiple males mate with the queen, allowing more than one sperm to fertilize one egg.

WHAT IS THE HONEYBEE CRISIS? Honeybees, both domestic and wild, are responsible for around 80 per cent of worldwide pollination, according to Greenpeace. But bee colony collapses across the globe are threatening their vital work. Bees are dying from a combination of pesticides, habitat destruction, drought, nutrition deficit, global warming and air pollution among other factors. The global bee crisis can potentially be solved if dangerous pesticides are eliminated, wild habitats are preserved and ecological agriculture is restored, according to Greenpeace (file photo) Greenpeace has reported: 'The bottom line is that we know humans are largely responsible for the two most prominent causes: Pesticides and habitat loss.' This is important for a number of reasons, chief among them the amount of work bees put into our food production. Vegetables, nuts and fruits are pollinated by bees. Of the top human food crops, a whopping 70 of 100 are pollinated by the creatures, which account for as much as 90 per cent of global nutrition. Greenpeace has suggested the following solutions to the problem: The preservation of wild habitats in order to protect pollinator health

The restoration of ecological agriculture

The elimination of the world's most dangerous pesticides Advertisement

In this case, the team found the bees had as many as three fathers, and in one instance, no mother.

‘Ten bees were gynandromorphs with one to three distinct paternal origins,’ the researchers wrote in the paper.

‘Remarkably, one bee carried no maternal alleles.

‘This bee had female organs throughout, and arose from the fusion of two sperm nuclei.’

According to the researchers, this is the first time this phenomenon has been observed, with sperm fusion resulting in a female.