Apiology: The Study of Bees - Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper - page 30

wings to circulate air and provide ventilation inside the hive and to help removed mois-
ture from the pollen, brought in by foraging bees, in order to create honey.
At about twenty days old, the worker bee will become a guard bee, stationed at the
entrance of the hive. Guards admit returning bees only if the bees are part of their hive.
All bees must carry their own queen's pheromone to gain entry to the hive. Guard bees
also reject old or diseased bees and drive out the drones in the fall. Guard duty is a
worker's last job inside the hive before she becomes a forager bee. By this time, the
worker bee's sting glands are fully developed, and it is her duty to defend the hive. A
honeybee dies after inflicting one sting.
A worker bee does not begin foraging for pollen and nectar until she is three weeks
old. At this point she will leave the hive to collect nectar to make honey, pollen to feed
the hive, water to drink, and propolis , a resinous mixture used to seal up cracks and
other unwanted spaces inthe hive. Onaverage, asingle workerbee makes only tea-

spoon of honey in her lifetime.
Withallthesehiveduties,aworkerbeetrulyworksherselftodeath,bothbywearing
out her wings and through sheer exhaustion. It is not uncommon for adult bees to die
inside the hive. When they do, it is the job of the undertaker bees to remove them.

DRONES

Drones are the male bees, and they make up only 10 to 15 percent of the total honeybee
colony.Dronesarerearedinthesamefashionasthequeenandworkerbees,exceptthey
develop from unfertilized eggs. The drone cells are found at the lower part of the brood
nest, are larger than worker cells to accommodate the wider male body, and they have
raised wax caps that look like a bullet. Drone eggs hatch in three days and emerge from
theirlarvalstageinfivetosixdays.Thedrones'pupalstageisfivedayslongerthanthe
workers'. Chubby and squat in stature, adult drones emerge from their cells fully deve-
loped in twenty-four days and have very few duties inside the hive. They do not gath-
er pollen or nectar and do not make honey. They do not clean the hive or take care of
the young. They cannot feed or groom themselves. Because they do not have stingers,
drones cannot even defend themselves or the hive. However, drones are important to
the hierarchy of the hive.
A drone's sole responsibility is to mate with a virgin queen from another hive, and
matingisoneoftheonlyreasonsdronesleavethehive.Droneswaitatdesignateddrone
congregation areas—something like a drone hangout—for a virgin queen to fly by to
matewith.Thefastestandstrongestdronessuccessfullymateinmidair,copulatingwith
the queen from behind in a brief and rather violent encounter. The act of mating con-