The answer is – by mating with a drone of the same hive, the queen will end up with diploid larvae. You might be thinking – why doesn’t the queen mate with a drone of her own hive? That would save her the trouble of flying to these drone congregation areas. Once the queen bee flies into the drone congregation area, the hovering drone bees (numbering several thousand) would literally make a “bee”line for her, getting attracted by both visual and olfactory clues. Because, for drone bees, death closely follows their successful mating act. While the primary task of the drone bee is to mate with a virgin queen bee, its purpose of living is also much the same. Getting Down To Business – The Mating Time After some days, the diet changes to honey and pollen.The larvae enjoy a royal diet – the protein-rich royal jelly that the worker bees bring to them.These males had fertilized the drones’ mom’s eggs. But drones do have maternal grandfathers. This is because drones hatch from unfertilized eggs that don’t require a male bee. However – surprise, surprise! Drones don’t have a daddy. The eggs receive their genetic components from their mom – the queen.There are designated large cells for this in the hive.The queen lays the unfertilized drone eggs in the hive.The birth of a drone bee is another example of nature’s wonders. Image source: Drone Bees – Seeing The Light Of The Day So, the mating usually happens with a drone of another hive. These areas are further than what most drones can fly to. The virgin queen bees fly to the drone congregation areas. The queen bee might not necessarily belong to the same hive. The main job of the drone bee is to mate with a receptive unfertilized queen bee. But drone bees play a very important role. They are not eulogized like the worker bees or the queen bee. What Do Drone Bees Do, If Anything At All?ĭrone bees are fascinating creatures. They don’t fetch food for the colony, they can’t feed without help from worker bees, they don’t play a role in building honeycombs in short, they don’t do much of anything. You could possibly describe the drone bees as the “lazybones” in the world of highly active bees. Are you wondering why it needs to do so? We would let you know, for sure. But even with a stout and heavy body, the drone bees are fast fliers because they need to catch up with the queen bee in flight. They have a round shape and a box-shaped stomach. Their eyes are much larger than those of the rest of their ilk, and so is their body size. Can You Spot Drone Bee In A Crowd?Ī drone bee looks like a larger version of the average male worker bee. Honey bees form a small percentage of the various known species of bees and have sub-categories like Apis mellifera, Apis cerana, etc.

The scientific name for honey bees is Apis.

Home Bees Drone Male Honey Bee (Role and Mating Behavior) How Does A Flow Hive Work? Pros and Cons 20 Most Used Beekeeping Equipment: Tools Needed for Bee Farming Drone Male Honey Bee (Role and Mating Behavior)ĭrone bees are male honey bees.

A drone bee