Why do they call bee in story books he most of the time?

Question

all worker bee's are sterile females
droves are males
and the queen bee

sorry drones are male

Answer 1

Interesting question. I looked on a site and got this:

Male bees are called drones. They emerge in 24 days, larger than the female workers. They have large eyes and no stinger. They lead a life of leisure, doing no work while being fed by the workers. Their sole purpose is to mate with a queen from any hive, thereby transfering the genetic traits of their mother. They die upon mating, or are expelled from the hive as winter approaches.

I think most people believe worker bees are male, thus the he part. I learned something from the site.

This reminds me of how cows have been represented, too: Barnyard (the movie and game) and Gateway. What's with that? Male cows? Especially those that can squirt milk? Scary...

The other sad thing that just hit me - maybe the worker bee is referred to as he because most of our brains still think of the male earning the bucks (or most of them) - that the boys have to do something while the girls keep the hive going.

Answer 2

With a bee hive, there is one female. That is the Queen bee. Therefore, when they talk about bees in story books, it is safer to say he then she because after all, there is only one female in the hive.

Answer 3

Because in English the default pronoun is usually "he", although that is changing as time goes on.