Drone Honey Bee

Found a dead honey bee on the sidewalk yesterday when I was heading out to city centre to get a haircut.  However, it was not the more common female workers, but a male drone honey bee.  I am not sure why it died - maybe it was too hot or maybe he had done his part of passing his genes onto the future.

After the haircut, I brought the honeybee back home to pin it and take some photos.

Interesting specimen

From this photo, you can see the drone has extremely large compound eyes, relative to the female workers, and his feeding proboscis is inconspicuous and small.  Not seen from this photo, but drones also lack the stinger because their sole function in the society is to mate.

Five more sleeps in Richmond before flying back to Ontario...