
Drone cells
I took advantage of a nice mild early spring day to look in the hive to see how things were going, and saw this group of drone cells. Drones are the male honeybees that develop from unfertilized eggs that the queen lays in cells that are slightly larger than the regular worker bee cells. You can easily identify them by the fact that they really bulge out the top of the cell as they are pupating. The appearance of drones is a good sign that the hive is preparing for Spring. Last year, as summer came to an end, the colony kicked out all the drones and they died. All of them. The drones have no chores and contribute nothing to the maintenance of the hive. They don’t even feed themselves. They would be a real drain on the limited supplies of food over the winter and that is why they are expelled from the community. Sounds harsh, but that’s one survival strategy they employ to make it through the winter. And besides, the Queen can always make more in the Spring. Which is what you see here. The only role the drones play is to fertilize virgin queens that will be emerging in the next couple months from other colonies in the area. Every day, the drones fly out of their hive and hover at special areas up in tree branches. There they await virgin queens who are escorted to this area by their attendants and mating occurs. And another cycle begins.