How do you tell a boy bee from a girl bee?

We talked about the worker bees and that they are all female. What about the boys? There aren't as many male bees in the hive as there are female bees. This is because the queen can decide when she lays an egg whether or not the egg will be male or female. Neat trick, eh? Why doesn't she lay more male eggs? Because male honeybees don't work! The female worker bees do all the work in the hive: cleaning cells, feeding baby bees, making honey, gathering pollen and nectar, guarding the hive. What do the male bees do?

Not much. Well, not much in the beehive. We call the male bees drones. The drones don't do any of the work that the female worker bees do. Beekeepers have always known that the drones don't work. The word drone is even used to tease people about being lazy! But surely the honeybee drones do something. What do the drones bees do? Maybe we can find out something about what they do by comparing them to the worker bees. Notice in this picture of a drone above that the drone has very large eyes. Here's a comparison of the three types of bees side-by-side. The drone bee definitely has the biggest eyes of the three. That makes me think that they probably do something that requires very good vision.

Each day, the drones will fly out of the hive and go to a meeting place outside the hive called a "drone congregation area." They wait there, all flying around like they're waiting for something to happen. Suddenly, a queen bee flies through the drone congregation area at top speed and the drones zip after her. If they catch up with her they will mate with her. So that must be why they need such big eyes! They need to see that queen flying by to catch her!

Drone photo from http://informedfarmers.com. Comparison image from http://www.bees-online.com