In Honor of Drones

Drones. Male honeybees. Big Fat Drone Boys …. All they do is eat, hang around with other drones, and wait for a virgin queen to fly by. When a queen does fly by several will copulate with her in mid-flight, dying in the process. Sometime in the Autumn after the nectar flows have ended, their sisters unceremoniously dump them from the hive. They have their wings chewed off and are dumped kicked out again if they try and return. All of this is done for the good of the hive as the workers prepare to over winter. At this time of year drones are nothing more than extra mouths to feed. To paraphrase Ebenezer Scrooge, they are expelled in order to “decrease the surplus population”.

Yet the hive would not survive without them. Without drones, queens would only lay unfertilized eggs which would develop into, well, drones. And then the hive would die. Drones (from eight to twenty drones per queen) inseminate virgin queens while in flight. Once inseminated, queens are then able to lay eggs that will develop into undeveloped females (workers), queens, and drones. There would be no hive without drones, no pollination, and no honey. Here is a video I put together with pictures of drones from my hive. The music is from the movie The Eagle, and is titled I Will Return and was composed by Atli Örvarsson.