🐝 Beekeeping For Everyone! - #7 - Drone Bee

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Honeybee Drone

The honeybee drone is an interesting character. In a communal colony where there are no laggers and every bee does their assigned job judiciously, the honeybee drone seems to be out of place.

The drone has no pollen baskets, so he cannot collect pollen. He has no stinger, so he cannot defend the hive. He cannot produce wax, or collect nectar. But he is just as important to the survival of the hive as the rest of the colony.

The drones are the only male bees in the colony and we believe their sole job is to mate with virgin queens. I say 'we believe' because if given the opportunity a strong and healthy colony will have as many as 25% drones. This seems way out of proportion to what is needed for mating virgin queens. So possibly drones provide additional benefit to a healthy colony that beekeepers have not yet figured out.

The general practice of beekeepers keeping bees for honey production is to limit the amount of drones a colony produces. To the beekeeper, drones are considered a burden on the hive and just a consumer of honey.

Life Cycle

Drones hatch on day 24 after the unfertilized egg is laid. Since drones do not perform any work in the hive, they are often congregated on the outer portions of the comb where the excess honey is stored. It takes 10-12 days for drones to become sexually mature.

Once they are sexually mature, drones will make daily visits to drone congregation areas (DCA). Humans have bars and clubs to meet, bees have DCAs, mysteriously defined places in the environment where queens go to mate.

There is usually a DCA within a mile of the colony that the drones will visit, while the virgin queens will usually fly to further away DCA to reduce the possibility of inbreeding. The interesting thing about DCAs is that the drones know where to go by pure instinct as the previous season drones have all perished.

Once a virgin queen arrives at the DCA she will be chased in flight by many drones, with the strongest and fastest catching her and mating with her in flight.

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Much like the worker bee's barbed stinger that causes its' death when she stings, the drones reproductive organ is also barbed and stays with queen when they separate. The drone will tumble to the ground and die.

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Drones can live up to 90 days as they make daily sorties in pursuit of virgin queens. They have no loyalty to a given hive and will often migrate through multiple hives. However, if they are not successful before fall arrives, they will perish in a less luxurious manner than mating with a queen. As winter approaches, the colony knows it will have no need for drones as no virgin queens will be taking mating flights. To reduce the winter burden on the colony, they dispatch any unhatched drone brood and kick the drones out to starve.

Beekeeping for Everyone! Series

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Check out all the posts in the Beekeeping for Everyone! series
#1 - Introduction
#2 - The Importance of Pollinators
#3 - Honeybee Castes
#4 - Honeybee Queen - part 1
#5 - Honeybee Queen - part 2
#6 - Honeybee Worker

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@bushkill