They serve no really purpose to the hive, other than to mate with a new queen. When the old queen gets old, she is unable to lay enough eggs. The workers create special sells within the hive that look like a peanut. Once hatched, this new queen will kill all other queens that hatched from similar peanut cells, kill the existing queen and round up the drones for a sex flight. She’ll fly high, sometimes mating with more than one drone.
Any drone that mates with a queen suffers an awful fate. After boinking the Queen, his junk falls off and he dies. She returns to the hive and starts laying eggs. Most healthy queens live about 4-5 years.
Why is the queen hard to spot? She’s also larger than the workers, and more slender n shape than the drones.
Drones can’t sting, either. They have their “junk” where the stinger is on the girl bees.
There are days I can find the queen in two minutes and other days I can check each frame a couple times with no luck.
To find the queen, you don’t look for a bee that looks different, you look at the movement, the queen and her attendants who move in a differently.