The one caste I have not talked about is the drones. They are the only ones that can go from hive to hive without worrying about being stung to death. They are just like children, everyone puts up with them.

There are over 2,000 drones per hive. They do nothing for themselves except walk and fly. They even have to be fed by the worker bees. They don’t have to clean house, forage, cook, baby the baby bees, guard the hive, or work in the climate control group. The only thing the drones are good for is, to pop one in your mouth when doing a demonstration just to get a reaction from the crowd. Drones do not have stingers, therefore, they can not under any circumstance, sting. The ooohs and aaahs are what makes this endeavor all worthwhile.

Well, there is one other thing the drones are good for. That is to congregate in a drone area and wait for the virgin queens to show up and race to be the first to catch one and mate with her. Of course, when a drone does mate with the queen, she keeps all his goodies and he fall off and dies. Then she will join the race again and mate with another drone. She may mate with up to about 12 drones before she goes back to her hive.

Now, about the drones that are unlucky/lucky??!! to mate. They are allowed to stay in the hive(s) of their choice until winter. At this time the female workers decide that there will be no more virgin queens until spring, so the drones are dead weight and they do not want to feed them through winter, therefore, the drones are forced out of the hive and are blocked from all the other hives. The only thing for them to do now is to starve to death. That is why I do not want to be a drone in a bee hive.