Do Bees Die After They Sting? The Barbed Stinger Explained

Why the honey bee stinger gets stuck

A bee’s stinger is a modified ovipositor, the egg-laying tube of its insect ancestors, which is why only females can sting. In the western honey bee worker, the shaft is made of two slender lancets that slide alternately along a central stylet. Each lancet carries about ten backward-pointing barbs, like a tiny harpoon.

When a worker stings a mammal, the lancets saw their way into the skin, and the barbs grip the elastic tissue. As the bee struggles to fly off, the whole sting apparatus breaks away from its body. It includes the stinger, the venom sac, the muscles that drive the lancets and a small cluster of nerve cells called a ganglion.

What happens to the bee and the sting

Torn from the bee, the sting apparatus keeps working on its own for some time. Its muscles keep pumping the lancets deeper and pushing venom from the sac into the wound. This is why a detached honey bee stinger can deliver its full dose of venom.

The bee does not survive the loss. The tear removes the end of its abdomen, including part of the gut, and the worker usually dies within minutes to a few hours. Biologists call this kind of self-sacrificing defense autotomy, meaning the self-amputation of a body part.

At the same time, the torn stinger releases an alarm pheromone, a scent that smells a little like bananas because its main ingredient, isopentyl acetate, is also found in banana flavoring. The scent marks the target and alerts other guards, which is why one sting near a hive is often followed by more.

Why would evolution favor a suicide sting?

At first sight, a weapon that kills its user makes no sense. The answer lies in the colony. Worker honey bees are almost always sterile, so they pass on their genes not by having young but by helping their mother, the queen, raise more sisters and new queens. Losing one worker out of tens of thousands costs the colony very little, while driving off a bear, a badger or a person raiding the honey can save the whole nest.

The barbs are thought to have evolved mainly against vertebrate nest raiders. A stinger that stays in place and keeps pumping venom delivers far more pain than a quick jab, which teaches large animals to keep away.

Who survives stinging?

Bumblebees, including the buff-tailed bumblebee, sting only when grabbed, trodden on or defending the nest; see do bumblebees sting?. Wasps and hornets can sting several times; can a wasp sting more than once? explains why.

Can a honey bee sting without dying?

Yes. When a worker stings another insect, such as a wasp or a robber bee from another colony, the barbs do not catch in the hard outer skeleton, and the bee can pull its stinger out and sting again. Even in skin the barbs do not always hold, and a bee sometimes escapes with its stinger intact. The honey bee queen has a smooth, curved stinger that she uses in fights with rival queens when several emerge at once.

How dangerous is a bee sting?

For most people, a single bee sting causes sharp pain, redness and swelling that fade within hours or a few days. The venom contains melittin, which causes most of the pain, and enzymes such as phospholipase, the main cause of allergic reactions. A small share of people are allergic, and for them a single sting can cause a severe, whole-body reaction called anaphylaxis. Hundreds of stings at once are dangerous even for people without an allergy.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counted an average of about 62 deaths a year from hornet, wasp and bee stings between 2000 and 2017, most of them caused by allergic reactions.

The best protection is simply to respect bees: stay calm, move away slowly from a busy hive entrance or swarm, and never disturb a nest. If someone is stung and has trouble breathing, swelling of the face or throat, or feels faint, seek emergency medical help immediately: call 911 in the US, 112 in the EU or 999 in the UK.