This video will show you what a honeybee drone looks like and also show you the difference between Italian Drones and Carniolan Drones.
The honeybee has two sexes, male and female.
Of course we all know about the Queen (the dominant female) who lays eggs and keeps the colony together, and we know that all of the worker bees, nurse bees and guard bees are also immature females and they all have various tasks throughout the colony.
All of these immature females come from fertilized eggs that the queen lays to create worker bees.
But there are also Male bees, called DRONES.
The queen bee can lay a fertilized egg or an unfertilized egg.
If the queen lays an Unfertilized egg, it will be a male and hatch into a Drone, a male that ONLY has the queens genes.
If she lays a fertilized egg, it will be a female that has the queens genes AND the genes of a drone that she mated with. This bee can become another queen if the colony needs a new queen or typically it will become an immature undeveloped female that is known as a worker bee, it all has to do with how much royal jelly the new larva is fed. If the larva is to be a worker bee, the nurse bees feed it royal jelly for 2 1/2 days, then switch its diet to pollen and honey. If it is to become a queen, they feed it royal jelly for all 9 days of its pupa life. They will then cap the cell with a mix of wax and pollen and the pupa will cocoon into a larva until it emerges as a worker or queen.
As a side note, some worker bees can also develop the ability to lay eggs and occasionally do. They lay them in worker bee cells that the queen would typically lay eggs in and yes, they will also hatch, but into undersized, yet functional drones as well… in this case, these drones would pass on the genes of the queen AND the genes of the drone she mated with, thereby giving more variety to the gene pool.
Drones are bigger than the worker bees and have giant bug eyes. They don’t sting and they just come and go where they fly to what is believed to be a LayLine intersection that may be close to the hives where they will hover and circle waiting for a new queen to arrive to mate with. When they get tired and hungry, they return to the colony for rest and feeding.
Drones are a sign of a very healthy colony as the queen wants her DNA to be given to other queens to lay fertilized eggs with her DNA.
When a hive is healthy, they produce Drones to spread the queens DNA but there’s a drawback to this…
Drones do not contribute to any part of the colony except for passing on the queens DNA to other queens that they mate with.
Drones do not forage, they do not protect the colony, they don’t sting, and they don’t make honey or royal jelly or wax or propolis.
They are a drain on the resources of the colony as they must be fed by the nurse bees and cared for by the worker bees.
They come and go from the colony and their only job is to pass on the queens DNA.
If the colony is healthy and bringing in plenty of nectar and pollen, and if the colonies numbers are strong, the queen will lay about one dozen unfertilized eggs that the worker bees will hatch and care for. Drones are large wide bodied bees with large heads mainly very large bug eyes. They look like they’re wearing helmets.
If the colonies resources begin to be depleted or at the onset of fall, the worker bees will stop and refuse to feed the drones causing them to starve to death to lessen the drain on the colony.