It has long been assumed that queen bees rule the honeycomb like a royal family: calling worker bees around and laying eggs. But what if you meet a queen bee and it stings you? They can sting you several times, and the queen bee will continue to live and complete its royal mission. Is it dangerous to be stung by a queen bee? Let's find out.
Being stung by a bee is definitely not a pleasure, bees are usually not fiery creatures, it may be the little guy you scare, these insects are a super project of pollination, their presence is one of the main reasons why plants can continue to grow, and bees only sting if they feel threatened. If you are stung, it may mean that you are too close to them, or more importantly, you are too close to the honeycomb, each honeycomb can live about 50,000 to 80,000 bees just like us humans, bees will do whatever it takes to protect the homeland, but compared to the complex security system, they use sting needles to fight off enemies, and after the bee stings, they release something called pheromone, which is a chemical that affects the behavior of animals of the same species. If a bee rushes at you, these pheromones are likely to disturb all the nearby bees, and they will quickly join, which is a party you will definitely want to avoid. Generally speaking, only female bees will sting, and the larger male bees do not even have sting needles, this is because the sting needles are basically improved spawning sites, queen bees also have sting needles, they are larger than the general worker bees, the average size of the queen peak is nearly 2.5 cm, about twice the size of the ordinary worker bees, because of the large size, so many people think that the queen peak stings to the most painful, but in fact it is not so.
Let's delve into the problem of size, first of all, queen bees are rare beetles because they work in honeycombs, the queen is the most important bee in the colony, because it is the only female bee that can reproduce, the queen has two main jobs in the honeycomb, the first is that it produces chemical odors, assists in integrating the rest of the bees to unite them, and second, it lays a lot of eggs, up to 2000 a day. The queen is surrounded by worker bees to meet all her needs at all times, they give the queen bees food, and the worker bees who serve collect and distribute the queen's pheromones so that the worker bees will not go to the new queen. However, even if it is the leader of the honeycomb, and its size is larger than other bees, but being stung by the queen is actually the least painful, because the sting needles of ordinary bees have barbs, so when they attack, the stings will get stuck in your skin and are difficult to remove, and the stings contain protein-filled venom, which will cause pain, affect the immune system and skin cells. The sting will also continue to inject venom into your body for more than 10 minutes or until it is removed. Unlike the worker bees, the queen bees rarely leave the honeycomb, their main job is to lay eggs, relying on the remaining bee colony to protect the honeycomb and the queen, so the worker bees are the fiercest stings, and they are repelling potential dangers in this way. The only reason the queen needs to protect herself is when dealing with the hostile queen bee, so the queen bee does not need to develop a nasty sting needle, its sting needle is much smoother, meaning that there will be no barb stuck in your skin, but it also comes with a little bad news, because its sting needle is smooth, the queen can stab you many times, the sting needle is connected to the digestive tract nerves and muscles of the bee, these are all necessary for the normal operation of the bee, when the peak of the sting will be because of the barb structure so can not pull out the sting needle, When they try to break free, the end is not good, because the queen's sting needle will not get stuck, so the bee will not feel any negative consequences, but it basically only stings you when the bodyguard is not nearby, and the probability is very low.
So which location is the most miserable to be stung by a bee? A man named Michael Smith decided to find out, there were 25 places on his body stung, and then he did a pain scale of 1 to 10 for each one, and he found that the most painful part was the nostrils, and out of 10 points out of 9, followed by the upper lip, which he estimated was 8.7 points, and the three least painful positions were the middle of the skull, the tip of the toe, and the upper arm, all of which were 2.3 points.
Back to the queen bee, how do ordinary bees get this title? The queen bee rarely needs to be replaced because it can live for five years, while a worker bee born in the summer usually only survives for six weeks. If the queen bee dies or moves to another honeycomb, the colony needs to replace her, which requires something called royal jelly, which is produced in the brain of the nurse bee, and they take this to feed the newly hatched bee larvae, which is basically a superfood, containing many nutrients, including vitamin b, protein, hormones and sugar, after feeding the baby bee for three days, the worker bee will then choose a few larvae to continue to feed them royal jelly, and the others are not so nutritious to eat. Royal jelly induces these bees to enter new stages of development, the most important of which are special organs for spawning, although humans still do not fully understand how this process works. Some scientists say that it is not the queen's milk itself that makes the bee a queen bee, they think that the queen bee's diet excludes chemicals from other natural plant bases, but even if we are not 100% sure how these special bees appear, what we do know is why there is only one queen in the end, and after the first queen appears, she will look for other bees that also eat the queen's milk, and then it will eliminate competitors, if several queens appear at the same time, they will stage a fierce hunger game, hitting only one, That's how the bees got the queen.
Other bees in the honeycomb also have important jobs, including gathering food, caring for larvae and building hives, and males have only one job, they mate with the queen, they eat honey stocks when they don't have to mate, basically to consume. Female bees, also known as worker bees, do all the other work, they keep their honeycombs clean, they take care of the larvae, they take care of the queen, they store honey, they build hives, they collect and defend honeycomb pollination, and even feed the male bees, each bee knows what work they have to do, because their specific hormones will activate local genetic combinations, telling them what to do and when to do it.
There are 4 working stages in the life of the bees, the first stage begins about after birth, the work at this time is to clean and conceive their own hive grid, after three days they enter the second stage, they are responsible for feeding other bees at this stage, this will last for about a week, and then enter the third stage, they will move away from the honeycomb center to become good helpers, they build the hive and guard the entrance to the honeycomb, this stage also lasts about a week, after that, they enter the fourth stage, that is, the final stage, the foraging stage, This is also the most dangerous part of their lives, they will leave the honeycomb at this time to find pollen to take home to feed the bee colony, when they collect pollen, they will also leave footprints on the flowers they touch, so that they know whether they have come to their relatives or strangers, sometimes they will find their footprints too crazy, but this stage will not last long, only about 10 days, because this work makes the bees do super tired, after such a short non-stop work life, the worker bees will leave the honeycomb, Never return, at the same time, if a worker bee dies in the honeycomb, there is a special funeral bee that will move the bee out, the life of the bee may seem short, but this pattern seems to give this species a good result, after all, they have been around for 130 million years, and they are still surviving.