I think to recruit drakes you need the according trait for your race.

I cuoldn't see what the Dragon Tech did either.  I got drakes by building the resource and a few turns later one appeared on the square.

I think the beast resource supply is too easy/fast now.  I have 10 ophidians wiping around taking out Gildar right now and I didn't have to pay for any of them (as far as I can see).  They just keep spawning every so many turns or when one gets killed.  You should have to initiate the spawning and pay some kind of resource fee for monsters (gold, metal, crystal...) otherwise monsters while less modifiable by techs just keep streaming out of the resource tiles.  Also if monsters started at level 1 that would be better.  Getting a level 11 drake for free is even more game unbalancing.  But level 1 to start and then training it up and if it dies starting at level 1 again would at least make me take a little more care of the monster unit.