+

Drone Bee

By Andrew Flaherty and Laurent Sainte-Marie

+The Drone Bee

What does it do?

This is a drone, a male bee. These bees do not sting so they are harmless. They live out their lives for one thing: to mate with a queen to start a new colony. Mature drones will leave the hive and gather with other drones in hopes of a virgin queen dropping in to mate with several of them. Once mated the drones die seconds later. Drones can not feed themselves or gather food, the worker bees feed the drones and they feed the queen too.

+Characteristics of drone

A drones eyes are bigger than other types of bees in the colony

The drones’ feet, head, and glands are different then the workers

Its abdomen is plumper than the others It does not have a stinger Its hairs, mandibles, and antennae are all longer than the

others

+Mating and the drone reproductive organ The drone penis is designed to disperse a large quantity of seminal fluid and spermatozoa

with great speed and force. The penis is held internally in the drone (an endophallus). During mating, the organ is everted (turned inside out), into the queen. The eversion of the penis is achieved by contracting abdominal muscles, which increases hemolymph pressure, effectively "inflating" the penis. Claspers at the base of the penis help to grip the queen. Mating between a single drone and the queen lasts less than 5 seconds, and it is often completed within 1-2 seconds. Mating occurs mid-flight, and 10-40m above ground. Since the queen mates with 12±7 drones, and drones die post-mating, each drone must make the most of his single shot. The drone makes first contact from above the queen, his thorax above her abdomen, straddling her. He then grasps her with all six legs, and everts the endophallus into her opened sting chamber. If the queen’s sting chamber is not fully opened, mating is unsuccessful, so some males that mount the queen do not transfer semen. Once the endophallus has been everted, the drone is paralyzed, flipping backwards as he ejaculates. The process of ejaculation is explosive—semen is blasted through the queen’s sting chamber and into the oviduct. The process is sometimes audible to the human ear, akin to a "popping" sound. The ejaculation is so powerful that it ruptures the endophallus, disconnecting the drone from the queen. The bulb of the endophallus is broken off inside of the queen during mating—so drones only mate once, and die shortly after. The leftover penis remaining in the queen’s vagina is referred to as the “mating sign”. The plug will not prevent the next drone from mating with the same queen, but may prevent semen from flowing out of the vagina.

+Development

Drones will die off or are ejected from the hive by the worker bees in late autumn, and do not reappear in the bee hive until late spring.

Type Egg Larva Cell Capped

Develop-mental Period

Start of Fertility

Size Hatching Weight

Drone 3 days

6½days 10 days 24 days approx. 38 days 15–

17 mm

nearly 200 mg

+Life cycle of drone honey bee

Egg3 days

Adult dies after mating

Adult 24 days85-86 days dies

Eats honey, nectar, and

pollen.

Pupa14 ½ days

Larva6 ½ days

Eatsdrone jelly

Cell capped 10 days

+Bibliography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_(bee)

http://www.hivetool.com/guide/dronebee.htm

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Beekeeping/Drone_Bee

Normand Talbot, J’aimerais Connaitre… Les Abeilles, Vol. 2, Regenstiener Publishing Enterprises INC. Quebec, 1972