This goofy looking chap is a drone, drones are male bees, they don't have stingers like worker bees but they have these really big goofy eyes. As we know the beekeeping world is a female dominated world and the only purpose for a male is to mate, mating happens during flight which means drones need really good eyesight to mount the queen whilst up in the air hence the big eyes. They can mate around 7-10 times before the endophallus is detached and he dies. It's a hard life being a male in the bee world, in preparation for winter any existing drones are removed from the hive and left to die. Drones offer no help inside the hive itself besides eating valuable food stores, it's an efficient move for the bees to remove the dead weight from the hive and have the queen lay new ones in the spring ready for mating season.
Here is a drone bee in the developmental stages, yes this is what bees look like before their hair and colour develop. You can see in this picture the eye pigment was just starting to form, it takes 24 days for drones to appear after the egg has been laid taking the longest out of the 3 castes.
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