© 2006 Company Name
Made by Serif
A Drone
Note the hairy rounded abdomen. A varroa mite can just be seen under right wing.
Drones are the fathers of the colony but have no fathers of their own as they are produced from unfertilised eggs. The drone has a shorter fatter body than the queen. It is stingless, has large eyes and is bigger than the workers. The drones help to maintain hive temperature; but their main function is to mate with the Queen on her maiden flight.
A workers bee
Worker bees develop from a fertilized egg and are female in gender. In the course of their life they carry out various duties. During their first two weeks they are restricted to house duties including cleaning and feeding larvae. The third week they build comb and carry out sentry duties and from then on they can exit the hive to collect pollen, nectar, propolis, and water . There is some flexibility in this depending on the need of the colony.
They may fly up to three miles in these activities which causes a large amount of wear and tear on their external skeletons and they die after five or six weeks. As the bees are less active in winter they can live for some 4 and 6 months.
