Eli5 how did bees evolve to be a stinger that kills them when used?
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The way it was explained to me is that the death-part is a byproduct of the shape and function of a bee’s stinger. Bee stingers have little hooks all over them that will get stuck in skin and can’t be easily removed. Unfortunately this kills the bee, but it really, really, *really* pisses off small animals that get stung by bees, making them run away.
Remember that worker bees are already non-reproducing death slaves to begin with. For them, survival of the hive is survival of self.
It is not about the survival of the individual bee. The bee that stings you was never going to reproduce anyway only the drones and queens get to do that.
By sacrificing themselves they help their hive, which shares their traits to survive and helps pass on their genes indirectly.
It helps other animals to learn and evolve to stay away from bees and that is a great benefit to bees in general at the cost of a bee which would only have lived for a few more months anyway.
That is a good trade.
They didn’t. That stinger evolved to fight other insects mostly, and it doesn’t get lodged there. The stingers are not that great against tough, leathery mammal skin, and the barbs on the stinger get lodged. I understand bird skin is thinner, and they can get stung multiple times by the same honeybee.
Their stingers are optimized for smaller animals- especially other insects, but also things like rodents and small birds. They all have thinner skin than humans, so stings aren’t likely to kill the bee.
In any case, worker bees don’t reproduce. So there’s little selective pressure to evolve a reusable stinger.
The stinger is not always plunged into the target and bees choose how hard they sting based on the level of the threat. When you hit the bee or attack the hive, they will always die for the swarm. Someone not seen as that bit a threat might get a light sting to move them on.
Cause they don’t always die. Bees die when they sting humans or other mammals cause our skin in very flexible and rubbery and thick so the stinger gets stuck and is basically ripped out of the bee killing it.
Insects have carapace (hard armor like skin) so the stinger either can’t penetrate or crushes through and can then be retracted easily. So for fighting insects its great.
Add to that the fact that the way evolution works is the ones that adapt better survive and reproduce. But worker bees don’t reproduce and they don’t sting humans in such numbers that it impacts the hive (in fact I’d wager the number if bees dying from their stinger getting stuck is within the fluctuation of the amount of bees that get eaten by predators each year). So there is no real evolutionary advantage to develop a different stinger.
Adding to the above: stingers in bees and wasps are modified ovipositors (egg laying organs.) The insects evolved long tubes to lay eggs, and with the addition of venom making capabilities, those tubes became stingers.
For some species like ichneumon wasps, the ovipositors became useful to lay eggs deep in trees, so they evolved to become crazy long. For others like parasitoid wasps, the ovipositors evolved to be long and strong enough to paralyze but not kill the target species the wasps prey on (cicadas, spiders, etc.)
For bees, short stingers with a barb proved evolutionarily best to protect the hive- note that the wasps mentioned above are not social wasps and don’t have hives.
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