Question

The lifespan of a honey bee drone is:
A.4-5 months
B.1-3 months
C.6-7 months
D.10-12 months

Answer 1

Hint: Honey bees drones are the male honey bee which is haploid in nature. Drones do not have stings due to which they are not able to collect nectar or pollen. A drone's primary role is to mate with the female bee. Drone does not play a role in hive formation. They just mate with a female honey bee and die in a short time span.

Complete answer:
Honey bees are grouped into three caste fertile queens, sterile females or workers and drones or male. Drones also called as male bees are the largest bees in the whole community. In each bee hive there are around 200- 300 drones and they do not perform any useful work for the hive. Drones are known as haploid organisms as they contain only one type of allele at each chromosomal position, (only one set of chromosomes from the mother). During the development of eggs inside a queen, a diploid cell with 32 chromosomes of female bees divides to generate haploid cells called gametes with 16 chromosomes. A drone is identified and differentiated by eyes that are twice the size of those of worker bees and queens, and a body size which is greater than that of worker bees, though usually smaller than the queen bee. The average flight time for a drone is 20 minutes.
The drones' main function is mate with a fertilized receptive queen. Mating between a single drone and the queen lasts less than 5 seconds, and drones die after mating, their life span is very short.

Hence, the correct answer is option (B)

Note: Drones have no useful purpose within the beehive. They neither provide the food, nor they feed the young ones or even help in wax production. Drone bees leave the beehive within the six days after emerging from the pupil cell. They keep on flying to areas known for drone congregation and return back to the hive only when they have failed to mate. The drones which successfully mate die minutes or hours after mating with the queen, and the rest of the drone bees survive only as long as the worker bees allow them to.