Are bees aware about the consequences of using their stinger on a large target? Consequently, are they aware that stinging smaller animals won’t cause them to die?

Question

Do they instinctively “know” they will die by stinging a human?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Yea, I think the soldier bees have accepted they might die in battle.

They literally have this condition where they’re basically like a dog that just starts humping the air. They’ll continue to sting over and over until detaching their stringers in many cases. It’s rarely just one and done. And some nevertheless survive, some just don’t get a good stick.

What’s more is muscles detach with the stringer to keep pumping venom into the enemy when the stringer does detach.

Here’s a protip, if you get stung somewhere, you should flee the area, the nest is very likely to be near and the attack signal has likely gone out. So, run.