Bee Pollen Health

Then there are drones — male bees, whose only purpose is to mate with the queen. A colony of 50,000 bees may have only a few thousand drones, even as few as 300. The word “drone” comes from the Old English and has always meant “male bee”; eventually, the word came to have the figurative sense of a “lazy worker” or “idler.” This second meaning of the word is appropriate, given that drone bees perform such a limited function in the hive. And these days, the word “drone” is most often used to refer to a pilotless aircraft, usually with military applications. In this case, the borrowing of the word probably refers to the deep, continuous humming sound of the drone bee rather than the bee’s lack of work to do. Drone aircraft, particularly in the border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, are busy indeed.

Drone bees are larger than workers, with stouter abdomens, though they are not as large as the queen, who has an extended abdomen. A drone’s eyes are also twice as large as a worker’s or queen’s. Because mating occurs in flight, the drone needs good vision to ensure successful performance, and he also must be able to fly relatively rapidly.

The queen lays fertilized eggs, most of which develop into female larvae and eventually worker bees but some of which develop into male larvae. Among some species of honey bee (and among many kinds of bumblebees), however, it is the sterile worker bees who lay unfertilized eggs that develop into drones. This process is called parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction in which the laying of eggs, and the growth and development of subsequent embryos, occurs without requiring fertilization by a male. This form of reproduction, in one variation or another, is common among various invertebrates.

The Drone Bee

Eggs destined to become male drone larvae — whether fertilized eggs laid by the queen or unfertilized eggs laid by worker bees — are laid in what are called drone cells in the hive; these cells are slightly wider than normal brood cells. Worker bees fill the cells with a mixture of worker jelly, pollen, and honey, as food for the young drone larvae; the drone cells are then capped with beeswax as the larvae develop. It’s easy to distinguish a capped drone cell from a capped worker cell, as the caps of the former bulge out. Once a young drone emerges from his cell, he will live in the hive for about a week, feeding on food stores available within the hive, and then, depending on the time of year, he will begin leaving the hive and finding food sources on his own.

Whether he is inside the hive or finding his own meals outside the hive, the drone does no work whatsoever. He does not help the workers nurture larvae, build combs, or cure honey; when finding food in plant life outside, he does not bring any nectar or pollen back to the hive for storage. In fact, he does little more than eat. His ‘stinger’ does not function and he carries no venom; a drone is unable to defend the hive. If he is handled by a human, a drone may make a pathetic attempt to frighten his tormentor by swinging his tail around. And if the hive is disturbed, drones may join workers in buzzing around the intruder in an attempt to disorient and frighten the intruder off, but he cannot inflict stings as the workers can.

Drones exist exclusively for the purpose of fertilizing a receptive queen. As young drones begin leaving the hive in search of food, they tend to congregate in areas near the hive, in an almost human behavioral pattern. Meanwhile, virgin queens from various hives in the vicinity will make mating flights in the vicinity; the drones pursue them and mate in mid-flight. Usually, a drone will end up mating with a virgin queen from a different colony, and each virgin queen will mate with several drones; this mating pattern ensures good genetic mixing among honey bee populations.

A drone can mate only one time, and once he successfully mates, he dies. His sexual organ is barbed, and after mating is ripped from his abdomen. He then plummets to the ground in a death spiral, while the mating queen goes off in search of other partners. Drones who fail to mate fare no better; because they are useless to the hive and a drain on the hive’s stored-up resources, worker bees expel all remaining drones at the beginning of the cold season, when mating is over for the year. Because there is no food to be found from flowers or other plant life in the late autumn and winter, these expelled drones will starve to death. The life expectancy of a drone bee is about 90 days.

Drones face other perils as well. Varroa mites are a common parasite in hives, and an infestation of these mites, which carry deadly viruses, can destroy a hive. These mites propagate within brood cells, infecting bee larvae with viruses, and they prefer drone cells because drones undergo a longer development period than worker bee larvae. The mites, therefore, have a longer time period to ensure their own propagation.

Honey bee drones perform an extremely limited role in the overall life of the hive, but obviously a critical one.