You are currently browsing the daily archive for February 6, 2012.
A Honeybee Drone
Even though honey bees they mimic humans in some ways (for example with their rigidly hierarchical hive organization), they are alarmingly alien in many respects. Nowhere is this more in evidence than in the lives of honeybee drones—the male bees which play a role in reproduction but are otherwise alarmingly superfluous to the workings of a bee hive.
Drones are born from unfertilized eggs either laid by queens or by laying worker bees (which can only lay drones). Because the drones develop from unfertilized eggs they have only one set of chromosomes (a reproductive process known as arrhenotokous parthenogenesis) and each drone produces genetically identical sperm. A fertilized queen can lay female worker bees which have two sets of chromosomes (diploid). Worker bees are extremely closely related as sisters since they share identical genetic information from the father (as opposed to most other animals where male sex cells are not all genetically identical).
Drones do not posess stingers and can be safely handled.
Drones are different in appearance from female bees. They are slightly larger than worker bees but smaller than the queen. They have extremely large eyes, perhaps to help them find a queen while flying. Additionally, drones lack stingers (which are really modified ovipositors and thus unique to female bees). Drones from different hives congregate at certain locations not far from a given hive (it is unclear how they choose or mark these locations).
Drones do not engage in the useful toil so characteristic of the workers. Male bees do not gather nectar & pollen, take care of larvae, or build the hive. Lacking stingers, they do not act as soldiers. Their only purpose is to mate with a queen—though only one in thousands will fulfill this destiny. Mating is accomplished in midair and proves fatal to the drone. His reproductive organs break off inside the queen and the contusion proves mortal. Drones have no place in an austere winter beehive. As winter approaches in cold weather locations, worker bees cast all of the drones out of the hive to perish.
ferrebeekeeper 