[DallasBiff]

I know a fascination with bees, but when I was in 6th grade in late September there was a swarm of bees, and the teacher said they are drones, and kicked out by the workers(females).

[Libloather]

I control ‘em. Don’t worry about it.

[Magic Fingers]

I only have (enormous) eyes for you.

[irish guard]

I’ve been raising bees for ten years. Whenever we open a hive, drones are easy to spot. An active hive in midsummer has about 40,000 - 50,000 bees. There is a queen, who is really hard to spot, thousands of workers and maybe 3,000 - 5,000 drones. They are physically bigger than all the female workers and easy to identify.

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.

[dfwgator]

[ClearCase_guy]

https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/register_drone

[Doctor Congo]

“spot queens to mate with”

oh my

[BitWielder1]

They have four little propellers instead of wings?

[Vendome]

I had an ex girlfriend who droned on and on and on.

stung a little bit too...

[Delta 21]

Male sperm carrier of the species. Your not gonna find much else about them other than they are fat, eat up all the saved honey.

Has there every really been any other task that they do?

[blackdog]

They are male honeybees.