Any female honey bee egg could become queen but almost all become workers. Why?

“You are what you eat.”

The worker bees nursing the female larvae decide what diet to feed each larvae from the time the egg hatches. The diet that produces a worker differs in components such as proteins, hormones, sugars and other nutrients in types and amounts from the diet fed to a larvae chosen by the workers to become a queen. The future queen receives only "royal jelly" from her hatching as an egg to the end of her royal life. Logically, the hive needs many workers but only one queen, so almost all female larvae get the worker diet.