Given the dire fate that awaits a honeybee once it stings a human or other thick-skinned mammal, is there any chance the bee is aware of what the outcome will be? Are they cognisant of the fact that once their stinger pierces the skin, they are essentially signing their own death certificate? "This pheromone in honeybees actually includes the molecule that makes bananas smell ripe (isoamyl acetate), so an upset honeybee colony can smell strongly of bananas." To bee, or not to bee "She does this by releasing an alarm pheromone that her sisters recognize as a cue to defend the colony," Iredale told Live Science in an email. Marley Iredale, a veterinarian at the University of Florida. If any perceived threat is considered too large for a solitary female bee to manage on her own, she is able to "call on her sisters for help," said Dr. According to a 2019 study published in the journal PLOS One, the average bee population has a female-to-male ratio of around 5 to 1.Īnd female bees are very happy to fight as a team when necessary. "Any stinging bee is going to be female, as the stinger is actually a modified ovipositor," or a tubular organ via which a female insect deposits its eggs, Ray added.įemale bees tend to massively outnumber their male counterparts. It is also worth noting that not all members of the "stinging" bee species actually have the ability to sting. ![]() To protect themselves from bee stings, beekeepers wear special bee suits and veils. "A significant number of insect stings that are blamed on bees are actually committed by wasps, which tend to be bolder and more aggressive than bees," Naeger noted. Rather, the bee's reputation as a combative insect has potentially been sullied by another winged stinger. "The only two significant ways to get a bee to sting you is to provoke the sting by grabbing or squishing so it does not have the option to flee, or by going too near its home nest." "Honeybees, like most bees, are timid when they are away from their hive and have nothing to protect," Naeger said. With that in mind, what encourages honeybees to go on the offensive? Are they naturally aggressive creatures, or are they somewhat misunderstood? Related: Why don't poisonous animals die from their own toxins? Why do bees sting? Other flying stinging insects, such as hornets and wasps, have a similarly smooth stinger, which enables them to attack a target multiple times without dying. Bumblebees have a "smooth stinger, and are therefore able to sting multiple times without dying," Ray said. Other bees, however, are able to survive after stinging a human, as they have different stingers to honeybees. ![]() "I marked and returned over 200 bees that had stung, and I never witnessed a single case of a bee being alive the following morning," he said. Naeger once carried out research to confirm that honeybees - which are the most common bee species worldwide, according to MyBeeLine, a network for beekeepers and bee enthusiasts - are incapable of surviving after stinging a human-like target. The bee, now with a hole in its abdomen "might live for several hours after stinging, but eventually it will succumb to fluid loss and internal organ failure," Naeger added. "When the bee flies away after stinging a person, the stinger remains, and the organs of the gut are pulled and detached, effectively disemboweling the individual," Ray explained. ![]() Human skin, however, is much thicker than most insects' exoskeletons, meaning "the stingers become lodged," Ray said. (This isn't the case with Asian giant hornets ( Vespa mandarinia), colloquially known as murder hornets, whose thick outer skin shields them from Japanese honeybees' ( Apis cerana japonica) stings instead, these honeybees swarm an invading Asian giant hornet, using the heat generated from fluttering their wings to " slow cook" their rival.) This is because the stinger is generally able to pierce an insect's relatively thin exoskeleton and can be extracted without incurring damage. Honeybees - of which there are around 10 species, according to Naeger - do not tend to die when stinging other insects or spiders, which tends to happen only if the bee thinks its hive is being invaded. (Image credit: Claudio Cavalensi via Getty Images) An extreme close-up of a honey bee (A pis mellifera) covered in pollen.
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