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

Thinking of bees as individuals is kind of a mistake. Obviously they are, biologically speaking, but a lot of their ‘thought’ process comes from pheromones and instinctive observation of the bees around them.

So you could draw a similarity between bees and cells, with pheromones transmitting information instead of hormones. Think of white blood cells; some are often destroyed when they attack a particularly nasty infection. They aren’t ‘aware’ of it because their programming is only responding to chemical markers.