As a beekeeper for several years I have posited that bees have evolved to die after stinging because the act of stinging can cause pathogens from the creature being stung to adhere to the stinging bee. This would create an easy vector into the hive where it would then spread eventually infecting the queen. It would be interesting if someone with some game theory experience could model this behavior.
I’m not sure game theory experience is the missing bit here. What are the chances of a bee getting infected by stinging an intruder? What are the chances of a bee not stinging an intruder and getting infected? (By just doing normal bee business, and during a hive intrusion) What are the chances that the infection will spread from that bee to a next inside the hive? What are the consequences of an infection?
Weather or not what you are saying makes sense depends on the answer to these questions. But these questions are not in the field of game theory. These are questions of bee epidemiology really.
Also, what are the consequences to the hive of losing a bee? It's a pretty small energy investment to make a new one. The reproductive success of the bee is the reproductive success of the hive - it doesn't have any way to pass on its individual genes.
I know a reasonable amount of game theory and I think you're looking at the wrong field for insight. The stung animal isn't making a strategic choice to carry pathogens around which might "payback" the some hypothetical bee hive which may or may not sting them. From the bees perspective the choice of strategy is independent of any other actors strategic decisions. Its just a normal optimization problem, not game-theoretic coupled optimization problems.
In this case the actor isn't the bee but the bee's genetic programming, which only propagates via the queen and hive. If the programming allows a bee to cary a fatal disease back to the hive, the program ceases to propagate and may cease to exist. This provides strong selection pressure against fouling the hive.
>> Not in this case as the pathogen isn’t going to react to the evolutionary defences of the bee by adjusting its infectiousness
> Of course it is
That is incorrect. Diseases might evolve to be more infectious. This is not a certainty.
There are many directions a disease can change and selecting to be more likely for a specific species is dependent on an N-vector calculus, with the most impactful cofactors being the length of time they (an attacking bee and a pathogen and the bee victim) coexist in the same environments and the utility of such an adaptation and the nature of the disease (ie incubation time, effects, etc) over time. It's likely the nature of a specific disease and the victim are going to vary more over time, making a favorable situation to prevent any attacking bee to simply not return.
Good point. I took a chance with my Great Courses only knowledge of game theory.
Another point people are pointing out is that bees don't usually die after stinging other bee. Other bees are the easiest vectors for the infections I have had to deal with. I wonder what evolutionary advantage of not returning to the hive grants when a bee stings a larger animal (mammal, bird, etc).
The mating process of the drone male bees (with suicidal semelparity) maybe has a more obvious (but similar?) answer in that they have served their role and want to maximize their reproductive effectiveness.
Certainly attaching your venom pump to a mammal will help discourage it now and in the future. Given average bee lifetimes are 3-4 weeks anyway, it's also not much of a sacrifice for the hive.
The genetic similarly of bees to their queen is higher (75%) than most species, so kinship theory may point to less individualistic behavior as well.
Maybe the bee dying is just the side effect of what it's really trying to do. Maybe if the the bees stingers did not have barbs they would just annoy a bear a little and he would happly suffer a few stings to get the honey. But with barbs the stinger stays in the mammal and irritates the skin for longer periods of time. If course this means the bee has its stinger ripped off and dies but his stinger still causes damage and has deterent affect. Also I imagine a bee that did not die when stinging still stood a good chance of dying due to slap from hand or paw anyway. Or if a bear is raiding hive thoese bees are died anyway if they don't stop him so you might as well inflict maximum damage
I can vouch for the veracity of bumblebees. I disturbed a nest and was chased by a couple of bees. I took 6 hits from one bee. 1st one felt like a rock hit me. Each after was similarly unpleasant. And after the 2nd each one was while I was in full sprint. I eventually escaped by jumping in a car.
Having been stung by bees, one really wants to get the stinger out. If one doesn't have fingers, that could be very annoying to the stingee, and certainly a further deterrent.
Since only the Queen reproduces in a hive and all the bees are its sterile offsprings, IMHO the whole hive is equivalent to the Queen evolutionary-speaking. Individual bees are not independent actors. So I think there is no game theory here and this is no different than a giraffe growing a longer neck.
As a fellow beekeeper, I like the cut of your jib - seems like you've done some interesting thinking on this point and it certainly seems like an idea that could merit further research. That said, my personal answer to this is in line with what the author concludes is a possible answer: "Perhaps because they're disposable parts of a larger super-organism which has evolved by multi-level selection" IE: basically everything the hive does, the hive does together and individual bee matter very little. In fact, upon reflection it might make sense to view an individual bee as more akin to a cell in mammals as opposed to an individual organism, IE: cells can die or be regenerated, but the overall body continues. Given that bee lifespans are measured in weeks, even a bee that does not sacrifice itself stinging in defense of the hive will have a very short existence - and be replaced by thousands of others in short order if the queen is healthy.
Interesting thought. My thought is that it wouldn't necessarily take many generations to evolve this trait. A single generation of bees dying after stinging would have a huge advantage over such a hypothetical disease.
Wondering:
1. Do all bee species die after stinging?
2. Do bees always die? What's the mortality rate?
There may be plenty of diseases out there living off bees and other hosts, that are pervasive enough to provide sustained evolutionary pressure to facilitate this development.
We are not speculating on much here. Some others have mentioned the unit economics of losing single bees vs. Losing the whole hive are really excellent.
The bees often don’t die immediately, and could very well return to the hive. Also, except in accidents, in nature this death generally happens at the hive, when eg a bear is eating it.
> I have posited that bees have evolved to die after stinging because the act of stinging can cause pathogens from the creature being stung to adhere to the stinging bee.
OK.
But why do bees die after stinging, but wasps don't.
Bees can sting other insects just fine. Also these Bees can’t reproduce, so that seems like an obvious difference.
From the hives perspective it’s a question of effectiveness vs the utility of individual bees remaining lifespan. Being even slightly more effective at discouraging mammals from raiding a hive for honey is presumably worth the loss of individual bees.
Wasps on the other hand lack the wealth of a bee hive so presumably different tradeoffs are worthwhile.
I don't know this fo ra fact. Actually I'd never even heard this before. I'd surmise the act of pulling a stinger out of another insect may be less than the amount required to pull the stinger form the bee's body, thus preserving the bee.
I think another possible evolutionary reason may be preventing rogue drones.
A rogue drone that can sting repeatedly is a huge risk to a hive since security screening is only enforced at entrance and the rogue one(s) are inside the hive. This way, with the one-shot stingers, the worst possible damage is the loss of another bee, and the problem drone has taken care of itself.
I don't think game theory is involved as there is no 'conscious' decision involved. Your theory is purely based on evolution through natural selection: the death of a bee after it has strung would increase the survival chances of the hive enough that, over time that (initially random) trait would be favoured.
OK, thanks. Even so, IMHO this is 'simple' evolution through natural selection because a hive is equivalent to a single individual, not a population, evolutionary-speaking since a single individual reproduces and all the bees are also the offsprings of a single individual. So ultimately, IMHO the characteristics and behaviour of the hive only depend on the Queen and its survival. Which can also explain in part why sacrificing individual bees might be a successful strategy.
This article makes one assumption without justification and then follows it to a wrong conclusion.
When bees sting other insects they can sting them multiple times, like a wasp. If you give them time a bee will usually be able to work it's stinger out of you and go on it's merry way. Their stingers just happen to get stuck in skin.
Why would honey bees evolve to leave behind an autonomous pump with their stinger? I don’t think the article suggests that all stings result in suicide, it merely answers the question of why it happens at all, and why it is peculiar to only a select subgroup of species in the entire animal kingdom
> Why would honey bees evolve to leave behind an autonomous pump with their stinger?
Evolution is not an intentional God. It does not have plans and it does not think. It is a randomized process in which not being disadvantage too much can make the trait survive.
No, there does not have to be advantage nor clear answer to question. A trait that produces no advantage can remain. A trait that produces disadvantages can remain too - just less often.
Improbable things happen in practice. Just less often.
> No, there does not have to be advantage nor clear answer to question. A trait that produces no advantage can remain.
What you're talking about is a spandrel, and eusociality is not that. I'd recommend reading the article more closely. Much of it covers the evolution argument with depth and nuance – or at least more depth than I've seen in the HN comments section.
To paraphrase my understanding of your position: a suicidal trait picked up by an entire species is a totally neutral trait that somehow neither provides advantage nor disadvantage and still hasn’t been lost and the reason that it provides neither positive nor negative benefit to that species is unknowable.
It is suicidal only in very limited rare circumstances. It also kills a single otherwise short living individual unable to reproduce. The individual belongs to an otherwise large colony.
So yes, the trait has negligible impact on survival of the species and it is entirely plausible for them to survive despite the trait being super slight disadvantage.
Also, they did not "picked it". They are insects, they made no decision.
I think there are some leaps in the article, especially revolving around the concepts of calling this suicide or a sacrifice.
First of all, not all bee species even have stingers and only honeybees have barbed stingers. Even then, honeybees do not always die when stinging animals, such as insects, as only mammalian and maybe avian skin is thick enough to retain the barb.
Calling this suicide or a sacrifice seems to imply that the honeybee workers are aware of possible death when stinging a mammal, which I haven’t read evidence of, and I don’t think it’s something we have the ability to know. And honeybees only live a few months, so it’s a very human-centric viewpoint nonetheless.
Is it known whether this is an evolutionary strategy vs an evolutionary mistake? I suppose that isn’t really a question we can answer. The only thing I can think of is that mammals are larger and if the venom keeps pumping after the bee removes itself, then that would inject more venom. But for larger animals, is there a strong need for the bee to only be active in the sting temporarily? It seems a honeybee with a smooth barb could just sting a larger animal longer, removing the “need” (of the above hypothesis is true) of stinging for a short time but leaving the venom producing system behind.
Yes. If only people read TFA (which was very thorough) before opining at length:
> These altruistic acts are typically not done consciously, they have simple been formed by natural selection to act in this way. For instance, your neutrophils do not consciously commit suicide, they have just been shaped to do that by evolution. And of course you don't go out thinking "Hm yes I will save you two from drowning because you are each 5/8 related to me." Although maybe one biologist did actually think like this.
I feel like ordinary good faith is enough to make sense of how the article is using those terms and the qualification is indeed there, and quoted above.
only if you implicitly think that “biological” means “there is a hard line between individual and collective life and one doesn’t count for some reason”.
One could also ask, "What good does it do for an insect to taste bad to birds? By the time the insect gets 'tasted' it's already dead."
Very simply, animals learn to avoid such insects. The same simple explanation - absent much of any concept of selfish or altruistic behavior - probably applies to bees as well, regardless of their colony structure. Once an animal is stung by a bee, it learns to avoid bees, which reduces predatory pressure on all bees (including bee mimic species).
The other primary role of the stinger is in defense of the hive, i.e. colony survival. That's a more direct group selection concept, as if the queen and some drones survive an attack on the colony, new generations can be bred, so an aggressive pheromone-trigger response by workers is likely.
Furthermore, one must always consider in evolution the role of accident and misfortune. For example, walking upright in humans is widely considered to have been a beneficial evolutionary development, as humans were able to spread onto the plains and were no longer limited to living in forests. So is the development of a large brain. However, together those factors make childbirth more difficult for human females relative to other mammals. This wasn't a desirable outcome, more of a side effect. Bee stingers lodging in some of their targets may be a similar issue - i.e. an accident of evolution, not something chosen by selection.
>Very simply, animals learn to avoid such insects. The same simple explanation - absent much of any concept of selfish or altruistic behavior - probably applies to bees as well, regardless of their colony structure. Once an animal is stung by a bee, it learns to avoid bees, which reduces predatory pressure on all bees (including bee mimic species).
In a thread full of Not Even Wrong answers, I would say this is at least the right kind of answer. It stands to reason, I think, that barbed stinger + tear-off of stinger really does serve the purpose of inflicting maximal pain plus pheromone signalling. It's a bit unsatisfying as an answer however, as it would stand to reason that the same can be achieved without necessarily needing to trigger the death of the bee itself.
Regarding it being an accident of evolution, I would say I find it implausible that this one is accidental - a barbed stinger is specific and seemingly tailored (in a manner of speaking, not literally) toward a tear-off. With the example of humans having large brains which make childbirth difficult, by contrast, it's easy to see it as an unintended downstream consequence.
> However, together those factors make childbirth more difficult for human females relative to other mammals. This wasn't a desirable outcome, more of a side effect.
This is a pop science concept from the 60s known as the obstetrical dilemma and is not well-supported by the evidence we have.
> All of this shows how human birthing is much more difficult and painful than that of large apes.
Sounds logical and commonly beleived, however I had trouble finding any papers to actually support that humans have more maternal deaths.
A 2018 paper[1] says “The observations by Yeligulashvili, representing cumulative data on over 200 births spanning a 16 year period in the Sukhumi nursery, remain one of the largest reports documenting labor in NHP [non-human-primates]”. The paper about Baboons also said “there were 1021 cesarean deliveries, 5195 vaginal deliveries”, which either implies that the veterinarians are very often worried about the survival of the Baboon mother, or that the veterinarians perform cesarean deliveries for other reasons (like humans do).
There are strong evolutionary pressures against a mother’s death during parturition, which leaves one wondering what the other evolutionary compromises are that result in maternal death. The survival of a baby mostly trumps the needs of a mother for passing on genes (a gene where a child lives to breed has a very strong selection pressure), so that probably is one major reason.
If human societies have brought up maternal death orphans for many many generations, then maternal deaths should become more common?
> The survival of a baby mostly trumps the needs of a mother for passing on genes (a gene where a child lives to breed has a very strong selection pressure), so that probably is one major reason.
This is generally not true for species that take a long time to reach reproductive maturity, and more so if they evolve to become physically underdeveloped at birth. A (proven) fertile human female is reproductively much more valuable than a newborn.
Yeah, on second thoughts you are right because I hadn’t thought about what happens to the mothers that lack the gene. If there are genes that kill mothers, the child has the chance to pass on the gene, which is a strong selection pressure for the child. However meanwhile mothers without that gene will have more babies, so the selection pressure is mostly whether the mother has the gene or not, because mothers without the gene will have more descendants. It’s difficult to think through realistic examples, and probabilities.
Other things to consider include that if the child’s genes kill the mother they generally do this by causing the child to fail to exit the mother, which also kills the child. The exception to this would mostly be genes that result in the mother’s death from blood loss, after the child had exited, so related to placental issues/placement. But for this to succeed for the child it also assumes someone else would care for the child as well as the mother would have, which is unlikely at best.
There is a very large difference between was and is, here. Human childbirth at this point is almost certainly a result of positive selection, not an “evolutionary accident.”
A “difficult birth process” has been played up in popular media. In the vast majority of cases, childbirth successfully exits a child, and also preserves the mother. There is some evidence that the mechanics of this process were better before early Western medicine’s gynecological “expertise”.
The whole thing stems from inaccurate, sexist attempts from the 20th century to explain why women are generally athletically not as capable as men.
Bees dying after stinging really highlights the question of what an organism is to me. It seems similar to routine cell death; the organism (hive) keeps thriving. In the grand scheme of things, the individual doesn't matter
> To see this, we can look at our own immune systems. For instance, immune cells inside your body known as neutrophils are just as suicidal as the worker bees. When bacteria invade your body, neutrophils migrate to the site of infection, unleash a whole cocktail of toxins onto the bacteria, and then proceed to die within 1-2 days.
In both cases, the suicidal nature of neutrophils and that of worker bees benefit the bigger entity that surrounds them. For worker bees, their death may save the colony from Winnie the Pooh, and the death of Neutrophils may save you from dying from a bacterial infection.
This question is beautifully explored in a video by the same author of the submitted article:
Organisms Are Not Made Of Atoms - https://youtu.be/vaJcmWjMNwo
Genes aren't even unique within a single organism but genes are what is passed on, so how can you say that it is the entire population that reproduces?
It's definitely not the entire population that reproduces. I think a genes-in-cells view would look at biomass of those cells. Lots of those cells aren't directly reproducing, but they are employed in service of the genes within regardless.
It's not neglect. A tiny part of the hive dies fending off something that would be harmful to the colony, which is the true reproductive superorganism.
Perhaps I'm oversimplifying, but if this neglect results in independent random events of destruction of these individual small things, it'll average out, so it's fine as long as they can be replaced
There was a scene in All Quiet On The Western Front where upon the signing of the armistice, an hour or so was left before the effective time of cessation. A brutal German general who was aware of this orders his troops to have one more charge. They were already celebrating the end of the war.
A bee colony is to a bee what you are to one of your cells. The author's attempts to apply group selection, kin selection or even natural selection to individual bees is a misunderstanding of what is happening.
There is no selfish calculus possible for individuals within a colony, they are all parts of the whole. Even the queen can get killed by the other bees if there is a younger more fit queen.
Male bees leave the hive every day to fly to a congregation area to mate with potential queens. They are quite literally analogous to sperm cells.
So if humans are a group, and altruism is something to be valued, are elites (1% of the 1%) simply those who have found ways to bend the group altruism to their benefit - and found stories like honour and sacrifice that guide others while they make no such sacrifice?
>I mean, we humans and nearly all other mammals certainly don't have a singular queen and a sterile caste of workers.
Corporations can be seen as superorganisms of humans. I don't think I have to elaborate too much here for this to seem a minimally acceptable metaphor?
There's even a queen replacement equivalent. In some circumstances a new new corporate queen will be prepared by the hive, but its also not uncommon for the (out of scope for this metaphor) mechanism of society to simply transplant one from elsewhere.
"Sterile cast of workers" probably requires the least explanation of the metaphorical equivalents here.
Governments as super organisms also seems an apt metaphor.
They are sterile within the organization of a corporate superorganism. They cannot create more employees. The desire to obtain more employees for the superorganism is derived from a complex set of signals that propagates throughout the organization.
Edit: Also unless employees are having sex and making the babies sort mail or fight off corporate raiders then the metaphorical aspects still hold.
I think he must mean in an economic or social capacity. An individual worker, alone, has essentially zero meaningful leverage compared to the CEO/queen. So sterility here means autonomy or agency or power.
This question is framed in an anthropocentric way that equates the thing that stings you with an individual bee.
In reality, it is not only much more useful but much more correct to think of the entire hive - or perhaps only the queen - as the individual bee.
That flying thing that stings you might not be a "bee" at all and the fact that it "dies" might be about as interesting to the hive/queen as clipping a fingernail is to you.
Honestly, I'm more curious about the way that wasps evolved and what path that took. Especially since it seems like they have managed to adapt (in some cases) to living eusocially without sacrificing individual members.
That, and why don't worker bees heal to continue working without stinger, instead of dying?
Do bees ever heal?
Is perhaps the cost of evolving a genetic apparatus for large-scale repairs higher than just birthing another individual in the comb?
Not saying all of that is true. It seems to be pretty much philosohpy at this point. But maybe one day our methods scale up enough or evolve :-) in some other way and there will be a breaktrough in evolutionary AI, like there was in neural nets.
Always fun to see the term “super-organism” pop up.
I was super fascinated with super-organisms back in college.
I convinced myself that mankind counts as a super-organism (although I’m sure experts might disagree, with reason). We’re an incredibly specialized bunch, the majority of us are utterly incapable of surviving without the tethers of civilization.
And I was super enamored with the notion that the internet was a central nervous system for this budding Homo sapiens super organism, and wanted to ask interesting questions like “is the super-organism intelligent?” To which the answer was “if we can learn from our mistakes.”
So I’m not so sure we’re an intelligent super-organism.
What you have done, is simply added a symbol to a phenomena. What exactly does the symbol "super-organism" mean to you? Or to anyone for that matter? If it doesn't have a rigorous definition then it is simply a token that evokes an emotional reaction.
> What you have done, is simply added a symbol to a phenomena.
Isn't that what we always do when we use language?
To me a "super-organism" means seeing the whole instead of the parts. When I speak about myself, I don't say: my hands did, my feet walked. I say: I did, I walked.
In my mind, I don't picture the multitude of cells composing my body as individual organisms, rather as parts of a single unit.
> most individuals could not care less what happens to the rest of the species
A popular trope these days but is there a basis for it? IME, almost every human I know cares deeply about what happens to other humans, to their country, community, family, etc. Many animals certainly bond with their families, some bond with humans and will die protecting them. I strongly doubt that creature are so narcissistic.
Other humans != human species. Let alone specific other humans, like my family.
I know what happens to each individual human: They will die. I don't like that very much, but making human species survive doesn't seem to help. I don't really care if new, stranger humans will be born to learn about my time in history classes, and eventually die, too.
Great little refresher on how hymenopteran genetics advantages eusociality! I do wish that it made an effort to address why bees are different in this regard from other eusocial hymenopterans such as wasps though (ie, why do bees die when they string you?). But at least it's a neat little mystery to appreciate:)
Let's not overlook that evolution is an economic process. There's an opportunity cost to every mutation. There may be an evolutionary path that will lead to non-sacrificial bee stingers, but to change that would be immediately detrimental to the species and so it is never pursued. Or at best, provides no immediate benefit which would allow the mutants to out-compete other bees.
Natural selection isn't goal-oriented and can't look to the future to measure a potential benefit. It's essentially throwing everything at the wall and see what sticks deployed at scale. The bees have found a local optimum that happens to tolerate bees dying when they sting and there's no pressure for that to change. If the economic formula ever changed where dying put them at a disadvantage, then the evolution engine would kick into high gear.
It'd be more correct saying that evolution can be explained with economic formulas.
Saying stuff like
> Let's not overlook that evolution is an economic process.
> If the economic formula ever changed where dying put them at a disadvantage, then the evolution engine would kick into high gear.
makes it sound like economists could explain and predict evolution, while in reality they struggle to even predict the next financial crisis, or deal with inflation and unemployment.
Why does every feature of every living thing have to have an evolutionary explanation? The author struggles to look for a natural selection explanation for honeybee stingers and then hand-waves away all that useless speculation by simply noting that other species of bees and wasps "followed a different evolutionary path". Why even bother speculate then? Different things are just different, I don't need an evolutionary explanation for that.
In fact, I would say this cult-like insistence on making up an evolutionary explanation for everything, which cannot be tested or falsified, and employing mental gymnastics to find any reason to fit the theory (instead of testing hypotheses by experimentation) sounds more like a conspiracy theory than science.
> Why does every feature of every living thing have to have an evolutionary explanation?
This phrasing implies the premise is true, which I don't agree with, so I am going to tackle 3 related questions:
- Why does /any phenomenon/ require explanation?
Because we are curious, and want to know how and why things do what they do. Answers lead to more questions, to more answers, in a loop of learning
- Why do all biological phenomena need an evolutionary explanation?
Because outside of artificial selection, natural selection is the only causal mechanism (outside of pure chance). Mitosis, Miosis, and Mutation are the building blocks.
But much of that boils down to, "why is x the way it is? Because chance". which is not very interesting, which leads to...
- Why does bee sting suicide in particular warrant an explanation?
Because under a naive understanding of evolution, it is a paradox. Also, there was a time when proto-hymenoptera were not eusocial, so how did they become eusocial? Those are really interesting problems to look at.
You are right in pointing out that pop-sci evolutionary handwavy explanations are a problem. But I don't think that is common in the broad science in biology.
> natural selection is the only causal mechanism (outside of pure chance)
It is this particular cult-like insistence on the omnipotence of natural selection that I challenge. Maybe there are other causal mechanisms? In any case, it needs to be a falsifiable hypothesis before we can call it "science". Can you prove natural selection caused this particular feature of suicidal honeybees? Even if we assume the author's natural selection explanation makes sense, the causal mechanism is FAR from clear.
My complaint is, biologists are wrong by limiting themselves ONLY to the evolutionary toolbox instead of seeking other causal mechanisms. And it looks like a conspiracy theory when the come up with fanciful unfalsifiable unprovable "evolutionary" explanations of everything.
> Because under a naive understanding of evolution, it is a paradox.
Then maybe the response should be, something is wrong with the theory of evolution, i.e. the theory of evolution cannot explain every feature of every living being, and we need not pretend it can.
I say the question "why do honeybees die when they sting" is interesting, but the answer need not necessarily be made in an evolutionary framework. A scientifically testable hypothesis would be more productive, or simply appreciate the pros and cons of a suicidal stinger without trying to overfit an evolutionary model.
This article is correct in being cautious about "why" questions, but for the wrong reason. On science topics, people often ask "why" when they should ask "how". Things don't happen for reasons; they happen via mechanisms. Asking "why" tends to lead to answers that imply human-like intentionality where it doesn't exist.
I wonder if their body just has no capacity to heal or regenerate. I’ve kept bees for a few years now and am
still very much an amateur, but I’ve never heard of sick/wounded bees recovering from anything. Their bodies are pretty simple and don’t have much in the way of superfluous parts or capacity.
Worker bees are not important to the hive organism - there just need to be a sufficient number- afaik there is mass die-off during winter and a core remains to cluster together for the heat during the 3 months.
Normally worker bees live 4-6 weeks, but the winter generation somehow is coded to live the entire 3 months.
In my experience, a wasp's sting hurts a whole lot more. One bee sting doesn't even hurt much; many probably do. OTOH, you hardly ever find a wasp's nest as large as a typical bee hive. So maybe it makes sense for wasps to have better weapons and try to save every individual.
I was removing an old raised bed from the previous owners, using a 20 pound sledge hammer. I got stung by a yellow jacket on the wrist, and it hurt as much as a toddler would playing with a rubber band.
It took me a few moments to understand what was happening - and I ran into the house, bringing seveal more with me. One got into my shirt and stung me under my arm, and that felt like purple. I balistically punched myself in instinct until they were all dead.
Then I learned how it works. You get tagged by the first hornet. They have a little scent that is a 'tracer', and once they see it, you're marked. Many, many times now I have been tagged by an angry yellow jacket and run to safety before the first stinging. There's about a second or two where your muscle memory can sprint you out of their area, about 300 feet. Often they will be found slamming the back door for several minutes, trying to follow me.
They hate percussive vibrations. Walking, sledgehammering, digging. They have two entrances to their nests, always a hole in the ground. I own a bee suit and will just go dig it up with a shovel now. I think it's still legal to do in my state. I really hate yellow jackets, I'm sorry but I can't see what they are bringing other than their rage.
> One bee sting doesn't even hurt much; many probably do.
It kinda depends on where, too.
My only bee sting was on my chin (during recess in grade school) and it was definitely more painful than the wasp stings I've received on other parts of the body.
It makes sense. One queen gives birth to all the young so they’re effectively all the same unit. Protecting the unit means survival, letting the hive get destroyed means certain death in the winter for any individual who survives.
"Bees do not die after stinging. However, the stinger is left behind in the victim's skin and the bee will eventually die because it is attached to the bee's digestive tract and other internal organs. When a bee stings, it releases a chemical called pheromone that attracts other bees to attack. This is why it is important to remove the stinger as quickly as possible to prevent more stings.
Bees are essential pollinators and play a vital role in maintaining the balance of ecosystems. They are important for the health of plants and the production of food. Therefore, it is important to respect bees and avoid disturbing them, as they are a valuable and vital part of the natural world."
