Bees have a barbed sting. When they sting something with thick skin, the sting gets stuck. The stinger then pulls out of the bee’s body, and the bee dies a short time later. So do bees know they die when they sting? Short answer: almost certainly not – not in the way we’d understand it. They sting on instinct and self-preservation, not because they’ve weighed up the consequences. But as you’ll see below, that doesn’t mean bees are simple little robots either. Let’s give it a proper bash.
How Does A Bee Sting Work?
A bee sting is a modified ovipositor. An ovipositor is something female insects use to lay eggs. In the case of the bee, it sticks the sting into the target. The venom is then injected into the target, and the barbs in the sting will lock the stinger into the target. If the target is you, a human being, or your pet, the skin of the target holds the barbs in the sting.
Learn more about: Why Don’t Bees Sting Beekeepers?
Parts Of A Stinger
The stinger itself (the bit that goes into you) has three parts. The main injecting part is called the stylus – stylus is Latin for a pen, and in some ways, it is a bit like a pen. The tip is sharp and can penetrate easily into thick skin.
On either side of the stylus, there are two lancets. These are crafty barbed devices that draw the sting into the flesh. One side will be drawn in and pull the stylus in a bit, and then the other side lancet pulls in a bit and pulls the stylus further in. It wiggles backward and forwards like this and enters the flesh.
Here I show a few learners how to remove some bee stings. I personally find that a few stings every now and then make me feel healthier. I have been stung about 35 000 times or so in my life. This is an estimate based on a certain number of stings per month average over the number of years I have kept bees. The most stings I have counted in one “event” is just over 200. Bee stings hurt, but they are not very toxic actually. The worst thing about bee stings is our immune reaction to them.
Apitoxin (bee-venom)
Bee venom is a cocktail of toxins and pheromones and other chemicals that are just there in case they are irritating or poisonous to something. There is an incredible array of toxins in bee venom, but in summary, let’s look at the main ones.
Alarm Pheromone
This smells a bit like ripe bananas and a bit like nail polish remover. The main compound behind that banana smell is isopentyl acetate (also called isoamyl acetate) – it’s part of a cocktail of 40-odd chemicals released from glands near the sting itself. If another bee catches a whiff of it, she’ll feel compelled to sting too, which releases more alarm pheromone, and the whole thing snowballs. This is why bees can kill an animal that can’t get away – a hive gets riled up, stings a dog, the dog panics and barks, the bees smell more alarm pheromone and keep stinging, and eventually the dog has been stung hundreds or thousands of times and dies.
You can mask alarm pheromone with smoke – if you get stung, puff some smoke over the sting site before you remove it. If you or an animal is getting stung repeatedly, move away from the hive slowly and calmly. Do not run away screaming – that just gets you stung more. It’s also part of why beekeepers avoid banana-scented snacks, sunscreen or shampoo before an inspection: bees can’t tell the difference between real banana and their own alarm signal.
Histamine
This is actually a really cunning thing to do. Histamine is your body’s own way of triggering inflammation. Sometimes we need this. When a bee injects histamine into you, it uses your own body to trigger reactions that hurt you. This is a bit like a spy going into a gunpowder factory with a fuse! All you need is the fuse to actually use the factory’s own gunpowder to blow it up. Histamine is a biological fuse and sets your own natural inflammation time bomb going.
Proteins
There are a whole lot of proteins. Some of these are enzymes that hurt nerves and cells. Others help to cause more histamine to be released. All of these proteins are also big enough to elicit an immune response. This means that over time, your reaction to bee venom gets more intense. This is however also countered by the fact that over even more time, your body will begin to regulate your response to bee stings.
Other Components
There are other irritating components in bee venom. Organic acids such as formic acid (poisonous), and traces of numerous other chemicals, many of which are irritating.
Do Bees Know They Die When They Sting?
This is a genuinely hard question, so it’s worth separating what’s been tested from what’s just my own hunch after thirty-odd years of getting stung.
Honey bees have tiny brains – around a million neurons against our roughly 86 billion – but small doesn’t mean simple. Researchers such as Lars Chittka and colleagues at Queen Mary University of London have shown that bees can count small numbers, recognise individual human faces, learn by watching other bees, use simple tools, and even show something like mood: a bee that’s just escaped a spider attack stays jumpy around flowers for a while afterwards. Bumblebees in lab tests have also been shown to trade off comfort against a big enough sugar reward, which some researchers take as early evidence of a basic capacity for pain. None of this proves bees are conscious the way we are, and scientists are still arguing about how far to take it – but it is now much harder to write bees off as tiny sting-delivery robots than it was a few years ago.
None of that is the same as understanding death, though. There’s no evidence bees grasp their own mortality, or connect “I am stinging” with “I will die” the way a person could reason it through. My own take: they have a self-preservation instinct, and at some level they seem to know stinging carries a cost, because they don’t do it for no reason. But when a bee does sting, she does it with a single-minded purpose that looks a lot more like hard-wired instinct than a considered, self-sacrificing decision.
Conclusion – do bees know they die when they sting? Almost certainly not, not in any way we’d recognise. But they’re smarter, and probably capable of more than most people give them credit for.
Do Bees Always Die When They Sting?
No. A bee sting is barbed. The barbs must be able to stick into something that can hold the barbs tight enough that the bee will pull the sting out of its body. If a bee stings a big ant, or another bee, the stinger normally just kills the other insect and the bee flies off unharmed.
I once got stung by a bee in the very soft tissue on the edge of my mouth – this is epithelial tissue and appears not to be able to hold the stinger. The sting hurt me and then the bee pulled it out and stung me on my nose. I was stung twice by the same bee and ended up looking like a clown with a fat lip and a round nose. Most unpleasant.
Why Do Bees Sting If They Die?
This is much like asking a young soldier what will happen to him. He thinks he’s a hero and he’ll lay down his life to defend his country. This is why armies recruit young people – it’s easier to put big ideas in their heads. But by putting that idea there, a society gets people willing to defend it. In other words, we hack people’s brains so they’re altruistic for the rest of us.
(I have lost family members who were heroes in various wars – I don’t say this out of any disrespect for the sacrifice they made for whatever cause was fashionable at the time. I just think that for a creature with as big a brain as ours, killing each other to settle disputes is something we should have moved past by now.)
Luckily, bees have relatively small brains, so it’s far easier for evolution to make a bee altruistic than a human. Bees sting to defend their hive. The queen is the main reproductive individual in the hive, and the workers are not. The best chance a worker has of passing her genes on is if the hive survives – she shares most of her genes with her sisters and the queen. So it’s genetically in her interest to give up her own life so the hive has a better chance of surviving. Genes are inherently selfish. Do bees know they die when they sting? No – but on some level, they act as though they know that if the hive dies, their genes die with it.
How Long Do Bees Live After They Sting?
If they sting me – about two seconds. After a bee stings you, it buzzes around the “target” (you) to call other bees to sting you. Catch the bee and squash it as soon as possible to avoid more stings and more loss of life.
In the case of a bee that didn’t sting me, and instead stung somebody who doesn’t know this trick…probably about 5–30 minutes. After a bee stings you, it flies away, leaving the lower section of its abdomen and digestive tract behind. This tears open its abdomen and disrupts its circulatory and respiratory systems. The length of time the bee lives will be short, painful, and sad. In cold weather, it takes a bit longer to die.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do bees feel pain when they sting?
Nobody can ask a bee how it feels, but recent lab research on bumblebees suggests they may have at least a basic capacity to register something like pain – in one study, bees put up with an unpleasant heat source for longer when a bigger sugar reward was on offer, which is the kind of trade-off you’d expect from an animal with some form of discomfort response. Whether that counts as “pain” in the way we experience it is still debated among scientists.
Can a bee sting you more than once?
A single honeybee worker can only sting smooth skin once, because her barbed stinger tears free along with part of her digestive tract, and she dies soon after. She can, however, sting repeatedly if she’s stinging another insect with a softer exoskeleton that doesn’t hold the barbs. Queen bees, which have smoother stingers, and most other stinging insects like wasps, can sting more than once.
How many bee stings can kill a person?
For someone without a bee-venom allergy, research puts the lethal dose at roughly ten stings per pound (about 20 stings per kilogram) of body weight, though documented deaths have occurred with as few as 200–500 stings depending on the person’s health and how quickly they get treatment. For someone who is allergic, a single sting can be fatal through anaphylaxis, which is why any sting followed by dizziness, swelling of the face or throat, or difficulty breathing needs urgent medical attention.
I hope this has helped you understand a bit more about bee stings and specifically helped us answer the question “Do bees know they die when they sting?” I always feel bad when a bee stings me – it hurts me for a minute, but it ends the bee’s life. This is a reason to learn how to handle your bees as carefully as possible. If you enjoyed it, please share!
Read more about: How Many Legs Do Bees Have?
Dr Garth A. Cambray is a beekeeper, biotechnologist and researcher with nearly three decades of practical beekeeping experience. He holds a PhD in Biotechnology from Rhodes University and has worked extensively in honey production, fermentation biotechnology and value-added bee products. View Dr. Garth Cambray’s credentials, research and experience.
Ready to Start Beekeeping?
Take the next step with our free beginner beekeeping guide. Learn what equipment you need, how to set up your first hive and what to expect during your first season.
