The Honey Bee - You Get Stung But It Dies
There are a lot of organisms that do things for the greater good of their existence and their colony and humans aren’t one of them at least we do not have a colony but honey bees can cordinate attacks on any mammal for the good of the colony just as they live for the colony. Asides from the attack, we can say that honey bees are adorable at least in cartoons if you do not find them adorable but one thing you cannot take from them is them making honeys.
When they cordinate attacks on mammals, they use their stinger and after the entire stinging process, they just die. This is because the stinger gets stucked in the body or fur of their victims causing them the pull of their body leaving the stinger after which they die. This act is not like that of other stinging insects like ants, wasps, and other types of bees that can sting without dying.
Their stinger isn’t just any type of stinger rather it is a venom injecting harpoon with blades that gets hooked into the skin so it doesn’t come out rather it keeps going in and the stinger is connedted to the venom reservoir. The barbs here make stabbing easy but makes removal very difficult. If the bee is going to take out the stinger, it will need about ten times the force it needed to put it in.
Due to the difficulty of removing the stinger, the bees rip off the stinger and the venom sac in what is called sting autonomy so it can give maximum injecting and maximum venom and the bee in this way frees itself and flies away. When the bee leaves the stinger there, pheromones are released asking other bees to do the same.
While the ripping off of the venom sac looks like a good idea, it isn’t a good one because as the ripping off takes place, part of the abdomen, digestive system, and the muscles are ripped off as well and when this happens, it caused the honeybee to die which could be either instant or taking up to 5 days for the death cycle to be completed. The bees will leave the stinger there for max pain for a few hours and leave the victim itchy for days.
Female workers do not get to reproduce, only the queen bee is oppprtune to do so but the worker bee’s job is to see to it that the eggs of the queen bee reproduce as many honey bees ad possible and if it includes dying for them, then that’s a sacrifice they are willing to make.
Similar to the worker bees, the wueen bee also have a stinger but the stinger is used for the purpose of egg laying. The stinger is smaller, less barbed, and it is used to fight other queen bees. There are other insects that protect their colonies as well, like wasp, termites, and the exploding ant. So when next you are getting a sting from a homey bee or any other colony insect, be sure that they are doing this for the colony.
Read More
- https://bestbees.com/bee-stings/
- https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/poison/bee-poison
- https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/25093-bee-sting
- https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/insects-invertebrates/why-does-a-bee-die-after-it-stings-you
- https://www.terminix.com/blog/science-nature/do-bees-die-after-stinging/
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/honey-bee-colonies
- https://canr.udel.edu/maarec/honey-bee-biology/seasonal-cycles-of-activities-in-colonies/
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