Yet another Hacker News

High-speed video reveals how honey bee stingers pump venom

29 points gumby 2 hours ago 5 comments

hmartin 38 minutes ago | parent

Beautiful.

yieldcrv 29 minutes ago | parent

> Honey bees are known to leave their stingers embedded in tender flesh once they sting you and fly away

This is an accident of our physiology as honey bees sting other species multiple times, just like a wasp can to us. They don’t except to rip in half or end their life when they sting us. This is not an adaptation specifically ensuring group survival, it is a tragedy exclusive to encountering mammals near the hive.

ButlerianJihad 22 minutes ago | parent

But their stingers are barbed, unlike wasp stingers and other stinger types which are smooth. Barbed stingers seem specifically designed to lodge in elastic skin (that is, skin of a larger vertebrate, not simply mammals) and a barbed stinger can also be more effective at delivering venom, pumping long after the bee itself has disengaged and slunk away.

I don't see how you can call it an "accident" if it's a simple fact that barbed stingers are well-adapted to lodge in the skin of larger victims and stick around and increase efficacy of the attack.

Worker bees themselves are disposable. If we consider an entire hive as the organism, rather than the component bees, we can easily see how the loss of several workers to loss-of-stinger attacks is beneficial to the entire organism, and it really does enhanced survival of the group, or the organism itself, if you will.

eviks 14 minutes ago | parent

> we can easily see how the loss of several workers to loss-of-stinger attacks is beneficial to the entire organism

We can't easily see it, especially if on the other hand you have a design that requires no losses. And it's not always "several", especially with bigger predators

yieldcrv 10 minutes ago | parent

the barb doesn’t stick in other organisms that they sting, and still delivers venom

the disposable worker is not disposed and continues working