No luscious nectar from the wild thyme's lips;
From the lime's leaf no amber drops they steal,
Nor bear their grooveless thighs the foodful meal;
On others' toils, in pampered leisure, thrive
The lazy fathers of the industrious hive."
This inability to feed themselves from Nature's sources makes them almost unique among the fully developed creatures of the animal world. Their consumption of the stores of the hive is not resented by the workers till the swarming season is over, and what is further remarkable is, that they are permitted to enter without molestation communities other than that in which they were bred, though strange workers would be strictly prohibited from such trespassing.
The first drones of the season appear generally about the middle of April, but they are most numerously hatched in May and June. The actual number in a hive varies from 500 to 2,000. Only one or two of these will become the mates of as many young queens, and the question is often asked, What can be the use of such an immense superfluity of males? The best answer that can be given is, that it is extremely important, considering the dangers to which a virgin queen is exposed in her flight from the hive, that there should be no difficulty for her in meeting with a spouse. When drones are scarce, and a very early swarm has issued from a hive, it happens sometimes that the young queen remaining at the head of the stock has to make several flights before finding a mate. As she is liable to be snapped up by birds, or driven away by gusts of wind, or lost through not knowing her own hive, it is manifestly far safer for the supply of drones to be large enough to insure a meeting on the first occasion of her flying.
It has been suggested by some bee-keepers that the eggs are fertilised in the cells by the drones, after the manner of the ova of fishes; but this theory is utterly untenable in view of the fact that much brood is found in the hives at seasons when, as a rule, no drones exist, i.e. in the early spring and late autumn.
From a reference to drones in the Troades of Euripides (lines 191-195), it would almost seem that the ancient Greeks, five centuries before Christ, had an idea that the male bees were the door-keepers of the hives, and the guardians of the young. We know, however, that this is not the case.
Again, certain Polish writers have asserted that the drones are the water-carriers of the community; but this notion is as fanciful and groundless as the preceding idea.