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Page: Honeybee Stings
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A honeybee that is away from the hive foraging for nectar or pollen will rarely sting, except when stepped on or roughly handled. Honeybees will actively seek out and sting when they perceive the hive to be threatened, often being alerted to this by the release of attack pheromones (below).
Although it is widely believed that a worker honeybee can sting only once, this is a misconception: although the stinger is in fact barbed so that it lodges in the victim's skin, tearing loose from the bee's abdomen and leading to her death in minutes, this only happens if the victim is a mammal (or bird). The bee's stinger evolved originally for inter-bee combat between members of different hives, and the barbs evolved later as an anti-mammal defense: a barbed stinger can still penetrate the chitinous plates of another bee's exoskeleton and retract safely. Honeybees are the only hymenoptera with a barbed stinger.
The stinger's injection of apitoxin into the victim is accompanied by the release of alarm pheromones, a process which is accelerated if the bee is fatally injured. Release of alarm pheromones near a hive or swarm may attract other bees to the location, where they will likewise exhibit defensive behaviors until there is no longer a threat (typically because the victim has either fled or been killed). These pheromones do not dissipate nor wash off quickly, and for this reason it is not always advisable to enter water to avoid being stung, once an attack has begun; the bees will wait and resume attacking as soon as the target leaves the water. What is far more important is to get as far as possible from the hive as quickly as possible, because additional bees cannot then join the attacking group.
(Alarm pheromones have been characterized as having a "dirty socks" smell, which is why amateur beekeepers will often bathe and change into clean clothes before working a hive.)
The larger drone bees do not have stingers, since they are males and the stinger is a modified ovipositor. The queen bee has a smooth stinger and can, if need be, sting skin-bearing creatures multiple times, but the queen does not leave the hive under normal conditions. Her stinger is not for defense of the hive; she only uses it for dispatching rival queens, ideally before they can finish pupating. Queen breeders who handle multiple queens and have the queen odor on their hands are sometimes stung by a queen.
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Important notice:
The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other
qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
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