Drone Questions

Swiss reader, Alexandra, writes a number of pertinent questions about drone bees and their role in honey bee reproduction. She asks, “How does a queen find drones for mating? Will they hang out near her hive until she comes out on her mating flight? Is the mating going on while in the air? Are these drones from various hives, or just from one? Does any mating occur with her own drones, who genetically would be her own children? Do drones die after mating? What are the drones doing all day before it’s time for mating flights? Why are drone eggs infertile? Why do workers need to be fertile? And, lastly, what happens if the bees have to stay home a few days, like in stormy weather?”

I’ll try to answer: Drones from many hives fly to spaces called drone concentration areas, DCAs, where they mate with queen bees in flight. Young queen bees fly to DCAs, usually more distant than ones occupied by drones from her own hive, making it unlikely for queens to mate with genetically similar hive mates. This helps prevent inbreeding, which results in inferior offspring. In the DCAs, drones seek flying queens by sight and pheromones. Drones die in the act of mating; usually more than a dozen mate with a queen. Alexandra questions the drones’ activity outside of their mating flights. Drones conduct no work; they eat honey and rest inside the hive. Workers and queens develop from fertile eggs, and drones develop from infertile eggs in a scheme, common among stinging insects, known as parthenogenesis. When queens make their mating flights, over a day or two, they collect a life-time’s supply of sperm from drones. The queens then self-fertilize each egg that they lay that is to become a worker or queen. If the queen lays an egg without fertilizing, it becomes a drone. Inclement weather can delay mating flights. Long delays result in sterile queens, like the drone-layer shown in today’s photo.

--Richard

Drones Go to Work

One of my beekeeping friends recently asked me what it means when you find a large number of drones in the hive. My response may not have elicited great confidence in me. I said that finding great numbers of drones in the hive might mean that the hive is in trouble, or it might mean that the hive is healthy. Shirley Murphy watched a hive with an exceptionally large population of drones slowly dwindle. At the time that the problem started, she didn’t have extra queens or brood and bees available to help her take corrective action. When these became available to her, she found the colony near collapse. Only the queen and a few attendant bees remained in the hive. Wax moths had started consuming the honeycomb, leaving a mess of webbing and feces. A mouse had moved into the unguarded hive. The hive problem, which first presented itself with a large population of drones, started when the queen depleted her lifetime supply of sperm that she gathered at mating time. Without sperm, she could not lay fertile eggs to produce workers or queens; she could only produce the male drones from her infertile eggs. Honey bees produce offspring by either fertile or infertile eggs. Reproduction from infertile eggs, known as parthenogenesis, is unique in the insect order hymenoptera. The order includes bees, wasps, and ants.

A visit to the Peace Bee Farm hives on display at the Children’s Museum of Memphis found large numbers of drones in each hive. Here, the colonies were strong and healthy. Large numbers of drones were being produced to provide male reproductive bees to mate with queen bees. This is a normal occurrence in the spring. If you click on the photo, you can see a number of drones, the larger bees, leaving and entering the hive. The drones fly from two to four hours each afternoon searching for queens. Mating in flight with queen bees is the sole work of drones.

--Richard