Why Do Honey Bees Sting?

Top Myths About Why Honey Bees Sting

1. Bees sting because they are angry.
2. Bees sting because they are hungry.
3. Bees sting because they want sweet revenge for their Queen!
4. Bees sting for fun.
5. Bees sting to settle an old bet between the King and the Queen's drones.
6. Bees are stinging me. Often, the most aggressive stinging insects are wasps and hornets, not honey bees or native bees. You might be confusing a hornet for a bee.

Why Do Honey Bees Sting - Top 5 Reasons

Honeybees sting when they feel threatened, so respect them by keeping your distance, and never disturbing a hive or colony.

1. To defend their colony, their buzzy family, all 15,000-60,000 of them.
2. To protect their hive, their house.
3. To protect their pollen sources, their food.
4. If they are alerted by other agitated/stinging bees pheromones and become more defensive.
5. Wasps & Hornets are mostly just jerks, they sting for fun. They are not bees.

Source: Wikimedia - Sting of a honey bee by Waugsberg

Do bees die after they sting you?

Remember, honeybees sting when they feel threatened, so respect them by keeping your distance, and never disturbing or attacking a hive.When a female bee stings, they drive their stinger deep into the body of the victim. The stinger plays a vital role in the injection of their venom called apitoxin. The stinger is barbed, meaning it features tiny hooks that point in the opposite direction of the stinger pointer, which makes it difficult to remove, and unfortunately results in the stinger being ripped from their body. It  isn't long after the stinger is ripped out of their body, they die. 

Hot Defensive Bee Balls? What?

"In a battle with Asian giant hornets, Japanese honeybees turn up the heat—quite literally—by swarming around the hornets and cooking them to death" .... When a larger attacker comes to a honey bee hive, you will often see tens of hundreds of bees surrounding the attacker. Sometimes they even form a tight ball, and buzz/vibrate to increase the internal temperature and kill the attacker.

Source: "Hot Bee Balls" Cook Enemy Hornets

Which Bees Sting?

In a traditional honey bee hive, the bees that sting are the female worker bees. Unlike the female worker bee, the male bees, or drones, do not have stingers and do not gather nectar and pollen. A drone's primary role is to mate with a fertile queen. Queen bees also have stingers, but they rarely leave the hive to use them. 

Paper Wasp vs Bee Sting Video

Sources: 

[1] - https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/bee_sting.htm