Who am I speaking about? About bees, more exactly drones. Favoured by sudden fortune I received many Cuban stamps with the letterhead Zangano featuring a bee. I do like honey and I preserve the memory of my grandfather, a beekeper with his bees but I did not distinguish what kind of bee was pictured on the stamp. I searched on the net where I found the answer. This very stamp pictured a piece of male bee and the stamp was a piece of a serie issued in 1971. One, nevertheless, can recognize a male be of his very large eye. My knowledge, earlier, was limited only to the fact that a drone’s task is only to impregnate the queen bee. In the course of my explanatory work I learned also how short and interesting their life is. Drones do not have fathers as they develop in the way of agamogenesis from unimpregnated ovum. When they reach adulthood they depart for the drone assembling point to fulfil their task of a drone. Mail bees do not copulate with the queen but they wait for them at the assemlby point. When the queen arrives she flyes over the place and the drones start to rally for her. This is for what the large eye is needed, to catch sight of the queen among the millions of flying bees. Mating itself happens during flying and after a successful mating the drone dies. If a drone is not successful in any mating during the Summer he would be killed by worker bees in the beginning of the Autumn.

 

The picture shows the mating flight: driven by their instincts drones fly off early afternoon to find and espouse a queen.