The main role for the male bee is to mate with a queen bee. They are developed from unfertilised eggs. This role also changes depending on the species. Since male eggs are unfertilized, done bees only carry the genetics of the queen, which is called haploidy (having 1 set of chromosomes).Bees do have genders. It is difficult to spot the difference between male and female bees but a key difference is in their role. This is called diploidy (having 2 sets of chromosomes). Because only the female eggs are fertilized, worker bees have half the genetics of the queen, and half the genetics of one of drones that the queen mated with. Female eggs are fertilized as they are laid. Female eggs are fertilized, and male eggs are unfertilized! Queens have a special organ called the spermatheca that she stores sperm from the drones she has mated with. It is determined by the size of the cell that she is laying the egg in! If the cell is small, the queen will lay a female egg, and if the cell is large, she will lay a male egg. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Sex Determination: Haploid vs DiploidĪ queen can control if she lays a male or female egg. There is simply not enough food for them in the fall and winter. At the end of the summer, the worker bees will kick the drones out of the hive to prepare for winter. If a drone does mate with a queen, they die immediately after. If the drones are unsuccessful, they will return to their hives and try again later. They will travel up to 5 km to areas called “drone congregation sites” which are places that drones from multiple colonies will come together in search of a queen. Each day, drones will leave the hive in search of a queen to mate with. A drone’s only function is to mate with a queen from outside its hive. They take 24 days to grow from egg to adult and can live for 3 months. They have excellent sight! Drones are produced from late spring to mid summer. They are much larger than worker bees, have no stinger, and have very large eyes. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA, Rory Wills, HBRC The Dronesĭrones are the male honey bees in the colony. Nurse bees are in charge of caring for the larvae and cleaning the hive, guard bees defend the hive entrance from intruders, and foragers collect nectar, pollen, water, and propolis. Different groups of worker bees will have different jobs in the hive. Workers will only lay unfertilized eggs, so only drones will be produced in a laying worker hive.

Worker bees do not have fully functioning reproductive organs like the queen does, but in some cases, can lay eggs in the absence of the queen. The workers that are produced in the late fall are called “winter bees” and can live four to six months as the colony overwinters. All of the workers are female! Workers take 21 days to grow from egg to adult and live for up to 6 weeks. They are responsible for collecting food and water, building comb, cleaning, raising larvae, protecting the hive, and caring for the queen. As their name suggests, worker bees do all the work in the hive. Worker bees make up most of the population in a colony. Finally, she will find the old queen and sting her as well. She will then find the other queens and sting them before they can emerge. The first of these queens to emerge becomes the new queen.

This diet is what makes a female larva grow up to become a queen instead of a worker. They will choose a few young female larvae and feed them royal jelly, which is a secretion from a gland in the worker bee’s head. When the queen becomes old or is not laying as many eggs as she used to, the worker bees will replace her. They will feed her, clean her and tell the rest of the colony how the queen is doing using pheromones. She can lay up to 2000 eggs a day! Some worker bees, called attendants, take care of the queen. The queen is the mother of all of the bees in the hive. She can then store the sperm from those drones and use it to fertilize her eggs for the rest of her life, which is on average 3 years. Within 10 days of emerging as an adult, the queen will go on a mating flight where she will mate with up to 14 drones. Queens take 16 days to grow from an egg into an adult. She looks similar to the workers, but her abdomen is larger. The queen bee is the only female in the colony capable of reproduction.

Male drone bee