The bee's stinger remains stuck in the skin and the skin can only be released by eviscerating itself, according to our partner The Conversation.
Only female bees have a stinger because it is the “vestige” of an ovipositor, an organ that their ancestors used to deposit eggs in places that are difficult to access.
The analysis of this phenomenon was carried out by Marie-Pierre Chauzat, biologist specializing in bees at the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES).
Quite naturally, the stinger allows worker bees to defend their nest if an intruder gets too close to it. Bears are very fond of honey and can wreak havoc where their populations are high such as in the Baltic States. In France, it is rather woodpeckers that can damage hives, and more rarely badgers. The bee colony is organized around a single queen who is the only individual able to lay eggs. Workers are all the other bees that perform different tasks. Foraging is the last task in their life. The function of males is reproduction, that is to say, the fertilization of queens.
Workers also use their sting if they are mistreated or feel threatened.
Almost always, bees only use their sting for self-defense.
When we are stung by a honey bee (the one that produces the honey you eat), the pain is not triggered by the stinger itself, but by a venom injected with the help of poison glands during the sting.
But in a normal situation - and unless you are placed next to a beehive - there is little risk of being stung by a bee.
Why do bees have a stinger?
The ancestors of bees and wasps did not have stingers.
On the other hand, they had an organ called an ovipositor.
This is used to deposit eggs in places that are difficult to access.
Since bees today simply lay their eggs in their nests, they no longer need the ovipositor.
Over a period of millions of years, this ovipositor became the stinger of bees.
That's why only female bees have one.
The males do not lay eggs, so they could not develop a stinger.
Sting of a black bee © SuperManu / Wikimedia, CC BY
Social bees living in the same colony have much more powerful stingers, as they sacrifice themselves to defend their queen.
If a worker dies, thousands of other bees can take her place.
In Europe, only honey bees live in shelters (hollow tree trunks, chimneys or beehives).
The other bees, said to be wild, do not live in society (with a queen and workers), they do not live in shelters, but most often in burrows that they dig in the ground.
The dart pierces the skin of an animal identified as a threat.
It is pointed and it is made up of two parts which slide quickly one over the other, thus allowing progression in the flesh.
The retractable stinger, located at the back of its abdomen, is barbed wire.
This allows it to stay planted in the skin of mammals, but not other insects.
When the stinger is retained, the bee can only free itself by separating from all its poisonous apparatus.
Thus eviscerated, she will die a few hours later.
Bee stinging © Waugsberg / Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
The individual then sacrifices himself to protect the colony.
It can therefore sting only once, unlike hornets or wasps whose sting is smooth.
The sting of the queens for its part is not barbed wire.
They can therefore use it more frequently, without risking fatal amputation.
The defensive behavior of a bee depends on a number of factors: climatic conditions, color, their physiological state, movement, smell, time of year, bee breed.
The consciousness of bees
It is difficult to assess the consciousness of bees.
The question is whether bees are capable of
sentience
.
This word designates the ability to experience things subjectively, to have lived experiences.
A
sentient
being
experiences pain, pleasure, and various emotions;
what happens to him matters to him.
According to this philosophy, this fact gives him a perspective on his own life, interests (to avoid suffering, to live a satisfying life, etc.).
Our "BEES" file
To move forward on this question, researchers have created experiments that reveal certain things. For example, it was discovered that bees know zero. For this, the bees were trained to choose, between two images, the one that had the least elements. During the test, they were rewarded with a sweet drink. Thus, between images with three or four elements, the bees had to choose the image with three elements. If the researchers presented an image with no element and one with one or more, the bees understood that zero was the smallest number. Bees therefore understand the mathematical concept of zero which is however not so obvious. Bees have also been shown to recognize human faces.
In conclusion, it is difficult to answer the question of whether bees know they will die before stinging a mammal ... unless they are a bee.
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This analysis was written by Marie-Pierre Chauzat, biologist specializing in bees at the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES).
The original article was published on The Conversation website.
Declaration of interests
Marie-Pierre Chauzat has received funding from the European Commission and EFSA. My husband has bee colonies.
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