![]() The queen lays these eggs into brood cells, which are the cells of the familiar honeycomb pattern. When the queen wants more workers, she opens up both chambers and lays fertilized eggs. Drones come from unfertilized eggs and are haploid, meaning they only have one set of genes from the queen. She stores the eggs and sperm in different internal compartments and can choose when to use each. ![]() kosolovskyy/ A Quick Bit on Honeybee ReproductionĪ queen bee has tons of eggs and sperm inside of her. The brood cells with exposed honeybee larvae will soon be capped by worker bees. While hives may have thousands of workers, the number of drones will be in the low hundreds. They sadly don’t get to make their own choices, plan for the future, or see their own children. However, as we will see, drone bees are really just sperm vessels. ![]() This is important because a drone successfully mating with a different colony’s queen is the only way a colony can ensure their genetic material survives into the future. Drone bees’ only purpose is to mate with other hives’ queens. Drone bees have just one major purpose spread the genetic seed from their colony far and wide. The drone bees are the male honey bees of the hive. Can you tell the difference between the workers and the drones? Hint: drones have much larger eyes. The vast majority of bees in a colony are worker bees. They gather pollen from flowers, produce honey, clean the hive, and mercilessly kill their drone bee brethren when the time comes. The worker bee is the bee you see on the day to day. This will turn an ordinary worker larva into a queen. If a hive needs a new queen, workers will select a larva in a queen cell and feed it royal jelly. A typical queen will make only one flight out of the colony in her entire life. She decides what ratio of workers to drones she wants. This queen lays (almost) all of the eggs in the entire colony. Layer of eggs! Controller of the hive! Queen bees enjoy enormous power within their colony. Surely you have heard of the all-important queen bee. All honeybee species have a similar caste system. There are a handful of other honeybee species. Apis mellifera, or the western honeybee, is the typical bee raised by beekeepers in the U.S. Interestingly, all three types of bees, even though they are very different, are part of the same species. Each type of bee performs its own function, which is crucial to the continuation of the hive. ![]() There are three kinds of honeybees the queen, the worker, and the drone. ArtoPhotoDesigno Studio/ The Honeybee Caste System Why would worker bees be so awful to their own brothers? An artistic example of the three kinds of honeybee varieties. Workers ensure this drone death by biting drone wings off and dragging their brothers out of the hive. These workers make sure all, and I mean all, of the drones die. Worker bees systemically evict each and every drone bee at the beginning of winter. The honey you enjoy with breakfast or tea required the selective, brutal killing of an entire class of bees. ![]()
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