this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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They have barbed stingers. Their stinger rips the bottom part of their abdomen off when they try to retract it. They don't live through that.
Do you know why that would be a positive evolutionary trait? Clearly, if they try to retract it, at some point in the history they must have been able to do so.
The worker bees do not reproduce, so their survival after stinging is not that important.
That doesn't even make any sense if you stop and think about it at all. Sure, a single worker bee dying isn't a huge deal, but they all do that. It would definitely be better for the hive and the queen if they didn't rip their own guts out.
but worker bees generally don't have to sting anything, the amount of them that do have to do so is low enough that it's not a big issue, and they have probably gotten work done before dying anyways.