[ternnoburn]

The drones are also clones (?) of the prior queen. They are unfertilized eggs, so they contain a genetic copy of half the queen's DNA. Mating with a drone from you hive would be like mating directly with your genetic mother. It's going to result in real bad inbreeding real quickly. Especially since queens mate a single time, and live for only a few years.

[cryptonector]

They're like half-clones, yeah. Queens can mate more than once though, but usually just once, and if more than once just twice. A well-mated queen will have sperm from a dozen different drones.