Early spring honey bee hive

 The Drone Bee

Since those worker bees have pretty much cornered the market on work, there isn’t much left for the drone bee to do. With worker bees all being female, there is only one job left for the male drone.

Let’s go back and start at the beginning. Our drone bee starts his life as an unfertilized egg, laid by the queen bee. He too, receives royal jelly for the first three days of his larva life and then, like the worker bee, his diet will change and consist of bee bread until he is nine days old and a worker bee seals his cell. He proceeds through his pupa stage all by himself. Around the 24 day mark, he will start to chew his way out of the cell. Unlike his worker bee sisters, he likes to take his time, and can take hours to hatch.

The drone is a pretty cute bee. He can be considerably larger than the petite worker bee. His huge brown eyes meet at the top of his head, which is quite convenient for sky gazing. He generally lacks the bright yellow or orange stripes associated with honey bees.

Once hatched, his life of leisure begins.

A day in the life of a drone bee. 

Drone bee, centre right
Photo courtesy MortonMolyneux©2014

If the weather is nice, a jaunt outside is in order. Upon wandering out the door, oblivious to the many bustling worker bees that have been up since the crack of dawn, he takes a moment to stretch and groom himself. Then flies off to join his buddies. A pre-arranged drone hangout is his destination. He, along with drones from other hives, will meet and keep a constant eye on the sky for a queen bee on her mating flight.

This is the drone’s one and only job, to mate with an unmated queen. If he is lucky enough to catch a queen on her high speed mating flight, he dies soon after.

Queen honey bees only mate once in their lifetime, and generally live three to five years. In the wild, a honey bee hive may swarm once or twice a season, presenting at least a couple mating opportunities for drones. Now that most honey bee hives are kept by beekeepers who want to limit swarming, the incident of hive swarming is drastically reduced, and drones are left with very little to do.

If no queen presents, our drone will return to his hive. Upon entering the hive, he will find one of the nurse bees and insist on being fed. Since drones are necessary to ensure the survival of the species, a worker bee will interrupt her work and see that he is fed.

Drone bees indicated by arrows

It’s really not all his fault that he sometimes seems more a liability than an asset to the working of the hive. Being a bigger bee he isn’t able to retrieve honey from the cells like the nimble little worker bees. He is also not equipped with a stinger … so defending the hive is strictly out of the question.

As we all know … all good things must come to an end and in a drone’s life, it is no different.

As soon as night temperatures drop below freezing, the worker bees – in true female fashion – begin to worry. Their biggest concern is whether or not they have stored enough honey for the hive to make it through the tough, and sometimes long, Canadian winter. The workers also know, that no queens will be created over the winter, and hence, drones are no longer required. Drones consume a lot of honey and are now truly a liability to the winter survival of the hive.

Drones sense this change in atmosphere and begin to cluster together inside the hive. There is safety in numbers, at least for a brief time. The worker bees, with their incredible work ethic, methodically drag the drones out of the hive, one by one. The guard bees at the entrance don’t let the drones back in, and they are left to freeze outside.

Vorroa mite on drone's thorax

I was pleased to find an article that stated drones might actually play an even more important role in the honey bee hive than originally thought. The varroa mite (which can be a deadly threat to honey bees) prefers to attach itself to drone larva and drone adults. When drones are driven from the hive, a large percentage of the varroa mites go with them, giving the honey bee hive a natural defense against this serious pest.

Every spring, after the queen has ensured the hive has a suitable work force, she will begin to lay drone eggs. The drone population makes up only 10 percent or so of the total hive population.

We anticipate the arrival of the drones mid-spring, and mourn their demise in the fall. This is just another example of nature’s natural rhythm and balance at work.