Drone Bee:
The life of the Male Honey Bee - (Apis mellifera)

Updated: 17th February 2021

Drones are fertile male honey bees, and they are vital for the survival of honey bee colonies.  Their primary role is to mate with a receptive queen honey bee, in order to ensure future generations of honey bees, and indeed, expansion and creation of new colonies.

I've heard it said that drones don't do much because (say some):

• Drones do little around the hive or nest - they don't clean or build honey combs, for example.
  
• They help themselves to nectar stores.
  
• They don’t collect food for the colony.
  
• It is sometimes said that drones spend their time drinking nectar, mating, and lazing around on flowers.
  In fact, one scientific paper by Kova et al remarks: 
  
  "Honeybee drones are often called “lazy Willi” (Bonsels, 1912) and are often assumed to merely function as “flying sperm”, necessary to inseminate virgin queens".
  
  The scientist goes on to say,
  
  "This view, however, is not correct." ⁽²⁾.
  
  

The fact is:

Drones perform precisely the role that nature gave them, and as such, they are a vital part of the honey bee colony.

In addition, understanding of the broader role of the drone within the bee colony is increasing with further scientific research.

Below, you can read about the importance of honey bee drones.

A drone honey bee

About The Drone Bee 

How Large Are Drone Bees?

• Drones can vary widely in size, but they are larger than workers, and smaller than queen honey bees.  The cells they develop from are slightly larger than worker cells.
• They also have significantly larger eyes in comparison with queen and worker honey bees.

Relative sizes of honey bee colony members, from left to right: queen, drone, worker. Note the large eyes of the drone.

Role Of Drones In the Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera) colony

• Drones ensure the continuation of honey bees as a species, by mating with queens.
• Drones can pass on important behavioural traits to new generations of honey bees, (such as hygenic behaviours) through their genes ⁽¹⁾.
• Drones help to regulate the temperature in the hive or nest, and this is especially important for the development of young bees and larvae.   Honey bee larvae and pupae are extremely stenothermic, which means they strongly depend on accurate regulation of brood nest temperature for proper development (33–36°C) ⁽²⁾.
• Although each colony has far fewer drones than workers, they nevertheless pull their weight with regard to heat generation.  Research indicates that drones can produce one and a half times as much heat as a worker bee, and that even those drones not directly next to the brood, are never the less assisting with heat regulation inside the nest ⁽⁴⁾.
  

Fatherless Drones

Drones are 'haploid', having been reared from an unfertilised egg.  As a result, a drone has only half the chromosomes of a worker bee or queen bee  - the drone has 16 chromosomes, workers and queens have 32. (That honey bee drones are haploid was first discovered in 1845 by a Polish apiarist, named Jan Dzierżon - often described as the  "father of modern apiculture" - see History Of Beekeeping).

Being haploid means that drones can have a grandfather and grandsons, but a drone cannot have sons!

To explain further:

Drones come from unfertilized eggs (they are 'haploid'), meaning that no male (drone) was needed in order for the queen to produce more males - in other words, they are formed without a male 'parent'.  (In fact, at various times, female worker bees can and do also lay eggs create drones although this activity is usually suppressed by the queen or policed by other colony members, despite the fact that they do not mate with males - they are referred to as 'drone laying workers'). 

But what about the queens - the mother of all the drones?

In order for a queen to produce new queens, eggs must be fertilized, for which drone bees are necessary.  This means that the queen (the "mother" of the drone), has a "father" - obviously a drone.  This means that any drones produced by the queen, actually have a "grandfather" (i.e. the "father" of the queen) - more specifically, a "maternal grandfather" (the father of the queen).

Put yet another way and more succinctly:

The queen who laid the drone eggs, is the offspring of an egg fertilized by a drone (male).  Drones themselves, however, are the offspring of eggs that have not been fertilized by a male, and they are therefore, fatherless.

This scenario, whereby offspring are reared from unfertilized eggs,  is referred to by biologists as ‘parthenogenesis’.

Drone Mating Behaviour

Each honey bee colony will produce several hundred drones (in contrast with the thousands of workers).