Beekeeper’s Notes September 2015

Published on: 1 Sep, 2015
Updated on: 6 Sep, 2015

Drones Over Guildford

In this month’s Beekeeper’s Notes, Hugh Coakley talks about exploding genitalia and being eaten by wasps, all part of the highs and lows in the life of the drone bee.

Who would choose to be a drone?

On one hand, it does sound attractive. The drone, the male bee, does no foraging, no hive cleaning, no feeding or nurturing of the developing larvae. They don’t have to feed the queen or, as they don’t even have a sting, protect the hive from marauding wasps.

The male bee – drone – is about twice the size of the worker. It has huge eyes – to spot the queen in her mating flight.

The females, the worker bees do all this and much, much more (as the adverts say).

The boys don’t even feed themselves when they are young. The girls, who look after themselves from day one, care for them and make sure that their lads, who make up less than 1% of the colony, are well fed.

The drones only known job is to mate with new queens. Well, that sounds ok.

They strut around the hive, twice the size of the females, and eat. Their massive shoulders and huge eyes mark them out in the mass of bees.

They gather with their mates at drone congregation points waiting for the opportunity to do their entire life’s work. I have heard that there is one such congregation point at the Devil’s Punchbowl at Hindhead. The drones over Guildford (and every other town in the country), hover over 10m above the ground and when a queen approaches, they follow her like a comet’s tale.

There is a beautiful slow motion film made of a queen mating. Click on this link to view it. 

As you can see, it is all over in a flash. However, in the case of the drone, it’s more like an explosion. The insides of the successful drone burst out to provide the queen with his precious load. In his moment of triumph, he falls to the ground, dead.

Worker bees at one of my home hives gather around the drone to prevent him entering the hive. As there are no new queens, his services are no longer required, so why feed him?

It’s not much better for those that don’t make it in the mating game. At this time of year, the number of new queens is low. So now that there is little need of the unique services offered by the drones, the workers kick them out of the hive and leave them to the unkind mercies of starvation and predation. Why gather nectar and feed the useless lump when he has nothing more to offer?

A worker bee drags the drone away from the hive entrance. A voracious wasp waits below to attack and eat the defenceless drone.

Wasps devour the unfortunate drone.

Life is good for the drone but the end is grim. I don’t suppose that they know what their fate will be and that is probably for the best.

It’s a great life for the drones over Guildford – while it lasts.

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