Drone cell

“ There is nothing to prevent there being grubs, and honey, and drones in the same comb. As long as the king bee is alive, they say that the drones are produced in a separate place; but when he is dead they are produced by the bees in their own cells, and such drones are more passionate: for this cause they are called stingers, not that they have any sting, but that they would sting, if they had the power to do so. The drone cells are larger. Sometimes the drone cells are placed by themselves, but are generally combined with those of bees, for which reason they cut them off. ”

“ The drone-cells are somewhat larger than the ordinary worker-cells, but this is probably not of much import, and it is said that the larvae intended to produce drones receive a greater proportion of pap than worker-larvae do: about twenty-four days are required to produce a drone from the egg. ”

“ Not one drone in five thousand ever fulfils the purpose for which it was created. Fifty drone cells is enough for one hive, and when more than this number is constructed (sometimes they will number a thousand or more in a hive) cut out all but a very few, and fit in a - 17 - piece of worker comb in their place—it is more profit to raise workers than drones. Drones leave the hive, to sport in the sunshine in large numbers, every fine afternoon in June and July. When on the wing they make a very loud, coarse buzzing. They have no sting and may be handled without the least fear. ”

“ The little swarm shivered as they watched the dwarf drone-grubs squirm feebly on the grass. Many sound bees had nursed on that frame, well knowing their work was useless; but the actual sight of even useless work destroyed disheartens a good worker.
“No, they have some recuperative power left,” said the second voice. “Here's a Queen cell!”
“But it's tucked away among—— What on earth has come to the little wretches? They seem to have lost the instinct of cell-building.” The father held up the frame where the bees had experimented in circular cell-work. ”

“ Queens sometimes become entirely barren before death; at other times the eggs of old queens are found to produce only drones. No matter whether deposited in drone cells, or worker cells, the progeny will be drones invariably. When drones are reared in worker cells, they will be very much dwarfed in size, notwithstanding the - 16 - worker bees attempt to overcome the difficulty by lengthening the worker cells to accommodate the monstrosities. The queen has a sting yet she may be handled with impunity, for she will not use it except when in deadly combat with a rival queen. ”

“ The queen sometimes does the same in a drone’s cell, where she continues without motion a very long time, when “the workers form a circle round her, and gently brush the uncovered parts of her abdomen. The drones while reposing do not enter the cells, but cluster in the combs, and sometimes remain without stirring a limb for eighteen or twenty hours.” Huber says that he has seen the workers, even in the middle of the day, when apparently wearied with exertion, insert half their bodies into the empty cells, and remain there, as if taking a nap, for half an hour or longer ”

“ But in abnormal circumstances, as with a drone-breeding queen, the law does not hold, and drones of a diminished size are hatched from worker cells, though the bees, on discovering the state of things, do their best by subsequent elongation to adapt the cradles to their unexpected occupants. Such is the explanation of the existence of "small drones;" but workers hatched in drone cells do not appear to be in any way peculiar. In regard then to the main fact we are confronted with the question, Has the queen a knowledge, at the moment of laying, of the gender of each particular egg? ”

“ He looked very fierce as he spoke, buzzing and twitching his feelers at every step.
"Exactly!" cried another Drone. "If I had a sting, I would lead the attack. As it is, I may be useful in guarding the comb. It is a great pity that Drones have no stings." You would have thought, to hear him speak, that if he had been given a sting like those of the Workers, [Pg 69] not all the Bees in the tree could keep him from fighting.
While the Drones were talking about war, some of the Workers sent to their Queen for advice. "Tell us," they said, "how to drive away the Kingbird. ”

“ Its huge wheels narrowly missed a dead fighter slewed across the way. Its tail went up.
Naturally, the queen ships wouldn't be dependent on the nerve-center of the hive that had spawned them; for each of them carried within itself the full-grown robot brain, the nucleus of a new hive....
Shooting began again raggedly, the gunners caught unawares. Perhaps the great machine was hit—but to stop it would take more than one or two hits.
It reached and passed the end of the runway, its wheels barely clearing the ground as the paved strip ended. ”

“ He said slowly, "I see what you mean, It's only big enough for one-way traffic—and the drones evidently have some system of remote control, so that outbound expeditions aren't using it at the same time as returning ones...."
"So, if we wait till some of the wingless ones enter from this end, and hurry through the tunnel close behind them—" Qanya left the sentence uncompleted. Dworn knew she could imagine as well as he what would happen if they failed to time it right, and met a drone column coming from the opposite direction. ”

“ They are thus enabled to seize and tightly hold any object they can grasp. The mandibles of the drone and the queen have two notches or teeth. Those of workers are not thus furnished, probably because, for shaping and smoothing the cells, an unbroken edge is much more convenient than a notched one. These organs are, however, very strong, and enable their possessor to grasp enemies, drones or queens; to nibble hard kinds of food; to break away pieces of damaged comb; and to mould wax for building purposes. ”

“ The drone, as Dr. Dzeirzon established, comes from an unimpregnated egg—the virgin queen, and sometimes even workers, being able to lay eggs which will produce drones. As a rule, drones are found in colonies whenever they are needed, or likely to be needed to impregnate the young queens, which is usually during the swarming season and honey harvest. ”

“ He noticed with fierce satisfaction that the scorpions were still doggedly firing....
The foremost drone came on, slanting down the sky until the gaping rocket-ports were plainly visible along its swept-back wings. But those sports still spat no flame. And it came on. It cleared the hilltop by no more than fifty feet, still diving faster than the speed of sound. It hit the desert slope beyond and ricocheted like a great projectile, bursting apart into fiery fragments that strewed themselves for a thousand yards across the rolling plateau. ”

“ Unlike the queen or the worker bees, the drone has no sting, and so you may let him crawl over your hand without fear of being hurt, even though he should become angry.
The life of the drone is a life of luxury and ease, for he does not work in the hive, neither does he gather any nectar or pollen. He is fed by the workers, and he also takes good care to help himself from the storehouses, whenever he thinks he would like a little more food. ”

“ So far as I could ever see, the drone seems to live and thrive admirably until he is either killed off by the workers, starved to death, or gallantly yields up his life in performing his sole function, which he invariably does in the performance of this function in the act of copulation. ”

“ Somewhere it will all be to do over again." Dworn glanced toward the empty west, whither the queen flier had disappeared—where, perhaps, by now it would have crash-landed two or three hundred miles away, to spew forth its cargo of pygmy workers and (if the inhabitants or the area where it descended didn't discover and scotch it in time) to construct more workers, fighters, a hive no less formidable than the one that had perished today.
Dworn said, brow thoughtfully furrowed: "But maybe there's a good reason, even for the drones. Maybe they serve a purpose...." ”

“ He checked his instruments, scanned the mirrors which gave him a broad view of moonlit desert to his left. To the right he could see nothing, for his little armored machine lay half-buried, burrowed deep into the sheltering flank of a great dune; all day long it had escaped the notice of prowling diurnal machines of prey. He listened, too, for any sound of danger which his amplifiers might pick up from near or far.
The motor, idling as it had all day while its master slept, responded to testing with a smooth, almost noiseless surge of power. ”

“ As soon as the queen has been fertilised, and the services of the drones therefore no longer required, the worker bees fall upon their unfortunate and defenceless brothers to kill them, either by direct stinging or by throwing them out of the hive to perish in the cold. The drones' cells are then torn down, and any remaining drone eggs or pupæ destroyed. Generally all the drones—which may number more than a thousand—are slaughtered in the course of a single day. ”

“ Even as the shell hit the ground close to the ranked drone aircraft, motors had begun to pulse and snarl all along the farflung line. The desert began to spew forth attackers. A motley horde of metal things, they darted, stalked, and lumbered from their lurking-places, and as they advanced to the assault the firing commenced in earnest, became a staccato thunder that blanketed but failed to drown out the beginning alarm-wail of a huge mechanical voice from the fortress of the drones. ”

“ Thousands of drone planes were to have been built, and perhaps were being built in some other Project, but not in this one. Thousands of drone planes with raw, un-shielded atomic engines, light and inordinately powerful with an indefinite cruising range, remote controlled, free of fallible human agency, loaded with bacteriological bombs, the terrible gas known as the G-agent, and in addition, loaded 'spray' tanks that would spew deadly gamma rays and neutrons over limitless areas of atmosphere. ”

“ No hope in either flight or fight; on the open ground, they would be run down in no time, and they had no weapons—even the notion of a weapon, as something apart from the fighting machine that carried it, was alien to their thinking.
The enemy vehicle rolled into full view and nosed slowly along the base of the mound; its motor whining questingly, only a few yards of gentle slope between it and the huddled pair. Its vision-ports glinted redly in the sunset glow, and Dworn could almost feel the raking of murderous eyes from behind them.... ”

“ The drone is without a sting, and, indeed, seems never to show fight at all. Its jaws might furnish no despicable weapons, but the insect seems to lack spirit to use them, even in self-defence, and when attacked by the mandibles only of the workers, manifests no inclination to employ its own against its tormentors. Struggles to escape, and haste to flee, seem to betray its absence of courage ”

“ The drone is larger than either queen or worker, and has enormous eyes, which meet one another over the top of the head; he has no wax-secreting organs, no pollen-basket, no sting. His antennæ are longer, his hum is deeper, his sole function is to fertilize a queen, and this done, he promptly dies. Failing in his first flight, he may make yet other ventures, but the chances are that he will die without attaining the only purpose for which he exists. ”

“ After the location has been thus marked, the bees leave the hive in a direct line, and return by their way-marks with perfect accuracy and regularity.
The drone bee is a clumsy fellow. The drones are the male bees. Where a dozen or more hives are kept, there is no necessity for more drones than one swarm would naturally rear, yet each one of the twelve swarms carries out its natural proclivities, and rears a large number of these useless consumers, not one of a thousand of which is ever of any use. Swarms should not be permitted to rear a large number of these non-producers. ”

“ The sound is produced by the stream of air forced from the bag by the pressure of the performer’s arm causing the reed tongue to vibrate over the aperture, thus setting the whole column of air in vibration. Like all cylindrical pipes with reed mouthpiece, the drone pipe has the acoustic properties of the closed pipe and produces a note of the same pitch as that of an open pipe twice its length. The conical drones mentioned above would, therefore, speak an octave higher than a cylindrical drone of the same length. The drones are tuned by means of sliding tubes at the joints. ”

“ Cells for storing honey are usually the size for drones; these will be made as soon as the requisite number for workers is provided. An abundant yield of honey during the process of filling a large hive, would therefore cause a great proportion of these cells to be built—the amount of drone-brood being governed by the same cause, is a strong argument against large hives, as affording room for too many of these cells, where an unnecessary number of drones will be reared, causing a useless expenditure of honey, &c. ”

“ If the increase of drones grows into an intolerable nuisance a trap may be applied for their partial extermination. Aston's drone-trap is an ingenious contrivance, though we recommend its use only under limitations. - 202 - It consists of a box to affix to the hive entrance, with an opening from the inside, but no means of exit except through perforations which admit only the workers; the bees are attracted into it by the light, while their proper flight-hole is darkened by a ridge over which they can just make their way into the hive. The drones are thus left in the box to perish. ”