The drones

The drones do nothing during all this activity. They just fill themselves with the sweets the workers carry in. They get big and fat, and are waiting for only one thing—to be married to the new queen. The worker bees let the drones live in the hive and eat all they want until the wedding. They know that one of the drones must marry the queen so that there can be more young bees. A few days after the queen is born, she leaves on her wedding flight. She meets one of the drones in the air, and when she returns she is ready to lay her eggs. After the wedding, all the drones are driven out of the hive. The queen bee lives two to three years, but the workers live only about six or seven weeks.

They work all the time, and never rest. They stay up late to work on the nectar they have gathered during the day. It is this nectar that becomes the thick honey that comes to our table. When a farmer comes past a hive at night and hears the happy buzz of the workers as they chew over their nectar, he knows he is going to have a large honey crop. Beekeeping is a large business for many farmers. But the farmers have very little work to do, since the bee does all the work and manufactures the honey herself. The farmer has to have his hives near where the bees can get nectar, and he must also see that the bees have enough to eat in the winter. The farmer must also keep his eyes open for swarms, which are great numbers of bees all leaving the hive at once.