"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?
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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.
Do bumble bee sting skin#
(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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