I understand how they die, but why?
In: Biology
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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