In social insect societies of ants, bees and wasps, sterile, female workers help their mother by caring for the young. In these insects, sex determination is based on a genetic system of haplodiploidy. Larvae hatching from unfertilized eggs are haploid (have one set of chromosomes, from the mother only) and are male. Young hatching from fertilized eggs are diploid (with a set of chromosomes from both mother and father) and are female. In these colonies, the number of males is usually limited, and they typically leave the colony after reaching maturity. Their lives are short and focused around mating only. In contrast, the females stay with the colony to help raise the young, and to protect, build, and maintain the nest.
In termite societies this is not the case. The males and females share the work, and therefore the sex ratio is more or less even. This suggests that the sex ratio of social insects is biased towards the sex of the species that helps the colony.
Read more:
http://phys.org/news/2013-01-babies-insect-sociality.html
http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/group/gardner/publications/GardnerRoss_InPress.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy
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