Lonely bee. Lonely bees almost never sting humans because they don’t have honey to protect them. Bees and solitary wasps are also less likely to sting to protect their nests, Schmidt said.
Bees can bite people, but they rarely do so. A bee bite is harmless for most people and hurts less than a bee sting. Moreover, bees die when they sting, but they can survive biting. Bee venom can be transferred via a bite, and it may have an anesthetic effect on the recipient.
Social bees and wasps that live in groups are more likely to sting and protect the hive or nest than their solitary counterparts. Some bee species, such as Africanized bees, are more likely than others to swarm and sting.
Queens are capable of repeated stings, but queens rarely leave the hive and are more likely to use their stings against hostile queens. While male bees do not have stingers, unlike females, female bees or queen bees can sting invading bees while defending the nest. Unlike bumblebees, bees can only sting once because their stingers separate after injection.
Observations of a Bee’s Stinger
Bumblebees have smooth stingers that are easy to remove, so these bees may sting more than once, reports BeeSpotter. The worker bees in the hive can only sting once because the sting is hooked and the bees cannot extract it without tearing the abdominal tissue. Losing the stinger and the body parts of the bee it’s attached to kills the bee, but that also means you have to take out the bee’s stinger because it can inject you with poison for up to 10 minutes after the sting, and the poison is what causes pain.
More often than not, the bee dies after it stings you because the hooked stinger gets stuck in your skin, detaching from the bee and tearing apart other parts of the bee’s body. Death occurs due to the fact that worker bees have hooked stings, due to which the sting pierces the skin of mammals (including humans).
Although the bee is dead, its sting acts quickly, and if not removed quickly, symptoms will gradually worsen as the venom sac continues to pump venom into the wound.
When biting a person, the female bee cannot pull out the hooked sting, but leaves behind not only the sting, but also part of her abdomen and digestive tract, as well as muscles and nerves. When a bee stings you, the hooked stinger is fixed in your skin, and when it tries to escape, it will die because it will vomit out the intestines.
Queen Bees and Their Use of a Stinger
Its sting is not to protect the hive; The queen bee only uses it to kill rival queens, ideally before they can get out of their cells. The queen bee has a hooked but smoother sting and can, if necessary, sting creatures with skin several times, but under normal conditions the queen does not leave the hive. According to the University of California for Agriculture and Natural Resources, a queen bee can sting multiple times, although it rarely leaves the hive, and drones (all male bees) don’t sting at all.
Queen bees and many other species of bees, including bumblebees and many solitary bees, have smoother, smaller stingers and can repeatedly sting mammals. While bumblebees have no records of stinging other bees, it is unknown whether they sting other species and insects. The stingers of yellow-shelled hornets and wasps are mostly smooth and can attack repeatedly, and European hornets don’t even sting. Queen bees, solitary bees, bumblebees and other species have smooth stingers that can repeatedly bite mammals.
Other native species, such as blue-striped bees and leafcutter bees, are capable of stinging but are rarely aggressive. Besides Meliponini, there are other solitary bees, such as the scare bee, which also have very few stings, but for the most part, the types of bees you might encounter in your daily life are capable of stinging.
Africanized Bees and Bee Venom
Africanized bees tend to be less tolerant of nest disturbances, dispatch more bees in pursuit of an intruder, and will pursue prey further than their European counterparts. Africanized bees, although physically identical to European domestic bees first brought to this country by migrants about 300 years ago, are genetically predisposed to be more aggressive than European bees.
Injecting venom at the site of a bee sting hurts others, while bee jaw venom has more of a paralyzing effect. Bee venom contains proteins that affect skin cells and the immune system, and can cause pain and swelling at the site of the bite even if the person is not allergic to the venom. The main component of bee venom that causes pain in vertebrates is melittin. Histamine and other biogenic amines can also cause pain and itching.
Although bee venom is by no means fatal to most people, it can still cause pain, itching, redness, and swelling. Bees rarely sting you unless you provoke their hive or accidentally crush or step on them. The bees will use their sting on small parasites that are present, such as wax moth larvae or varroa mite, leaving their sting for larger insects or creatures that they consider a threat to their hive.
While the sting isn’t much of a threat to most people (unless they’re allergic to bees), the strength of the bees lies in their numbers. Only honey bees have special hooks on their stinger that hold the stinger in the skin after a human bite.
