Find out why a bee dies after stinging

Posted by Simply SAMAD June 18, 2012

Find out why a bee dies after stinging

Rare photo captures the exact moment a bee leaves its stinger in a man's arm

The exact moment that a bee stings a man and zooms away - leaving its stinger and abdominal tissue trailing behind - has been captured on camera.

The images illustrate with brutal clarity why a bee cannot normally survive after stinging someone.

The photo shows beekeeper Eric Mussen at the University of California’s honey bee research facility, with the doomed bee’s stinger embedded into his arm.

‘As far as I know, nobody's been able to record anything like this,’ Photographer Kathy Keatley Garvey, part of the

University of California’s communications team, told the Sacremento Bee.

Ms Garvey said she had only ever seen the phenomenon of the abdominal tissue trailing behind a honeybee as an illustration in a textbook.

‘The bee is tugging a long strand of abdominal tissue as it tries to pull away,’ Ms Garvey says. ‘Most stings are a clean break. In fact, every bee sting I’ve ever had – about 15 or so – was a clean break.’

She took the photo while examining a hive with Mr Mussen during the pair’s lunch hour.

The bee keeper realised he was about to be stung and suggested to Ms Garvey that she get her camera ready. She started snapping away and managed four shots of the bee in action.

One photograph, titled The Sting, took first place in the Association for Communication Excellence awards’ feature photo category on June 11.

‘What most people don't realise is that getting stung by a bee is no big deal to beekeepers. It happens thousands of times throughout the country every single day,’ Ms Garvey wrote on her blog.