I understand how they die, but why?
In: Biology
When a bee sting I always imagine the scene from Final Destination 2 with the guy that got his hand stuck in the sink with his watch. he could push his hand and break that part of the sink or break his arm – depends on how strong is the part. so that… with a spine.
So… I don’t think there is a reason besides being weaker than they think, because if the thing that they sting has a thin skin, they won’t die.
Edit: also, bees are stupid.
Because they are sterile. Their death does not prevent the queen from procreation. Evolution is driven by what allows a creature to reproduce, and an individual worker bee sacrificing itself does not affect that process adversely.
A bee’s stinger detaches from their body and remains embedded in your skin delivering venom. Because it’s barbed they can’t remove it so when they try to fly away it tears out part of their digestive track with it.
It would be like you stabbing someone with a harpoon but the harpoon is part of your arm. When you try to run away your arm gets torn off along with all of your intestines and your lungs.
Pretty nasty way to go…
I mean.. the how is why.
From an evolution perspective it’s easy, the stingers keeps wriggling into you after they have died.. so even in death they are protecting the hive from a threat.
More to that, worker bees that defend the hive don’t reproduce, so for them this is helping to ensure their genes are protected and passed on
Er there have been some weird answers on here which aren’t right. I’d have to do find it in the achive but The Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Brighton University – a man called Hal Sosabowski answered this question on the public phone in show called Mystery Hour on the radio station LBC 96.3 (and he alao gave an answer as to if the bee KNOWS it’s going to die, very interesting if you ask me).
The bee’s sting has a barb on it, which when it penetrates the human skin, gets stuck as we are mammals with thick, layered skin. When the stinger gets caught in these layers, the bee tries to remove the stinger but it dies in the process.
If the same bee was to sting say.. another bee.. the stinger wouldn’t get caught – bees kill other insects all the time, and it doesn’t end up with the bee dying, at least not because the stinger got stuck. The bee can keep stinging other insects over and over no problem at all.
Wasps on the other hand don’t have this barb on their stinger – hence why they can sting you multiple times no problem.
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