Honey Bee Facts
The Queen and the Drone
The main purpose of the drone is to mate in flight with the queen bee; with body sizes larger than worker bees, though usually smaller than the queen bee, they have to fly fast enough to accompany the queen on her flight, dying soon after mating with her. Only early in her life will she make several mating flights, mating with an average of 12 drones a flight. These eggs she then stores for the rest of her life, which is an average of 2 to 3 years, over which period she performs her main function of laying eggs. She may lay as many as 2000 eggs per day.