Bees Don't Die After Stinging!! Hey Apitherapists - stop discarding them...

BEES DON'T ALWAYS DIE -after they sting you!!

It is commonly accepted that bees "always" die after they sting people. (They don't die if they sting something solid, because the stinger is "barbed", it is the barb that holds the stinger in your skin, ripping it off, opening up the bee, some sites say it "pulls their intestines out")

Apitherapy - treatment with bee stings - You may or may not know that bee sting therapy has bee shown to be amazing against many disorders - many journal studies - arthritis, M.S., bursitis to name a few. Just google bee sting therapy or check out youtube for some awesome videos.

Here's a good video from National Geographic: I applauded the rich textile mill executive who instead of trading in his wife with the arthritic hands for a younger one, he embraced the bee therapy and helped many, many people.

I personally got into it after a friend who had one very bad arthritic hand accidently stuck it in a bee hive - was cured of his arthritis within days.

I bought a hive two weeks ago because it was too hard to source the venom where we live.

It is "common knowledge" that bees "always" die after they sting. I watched a lot of videos, and they simply discard the bees in a bucket or something, and claim they die within minutes. It seemed horribly cruel to me. So I was only stinging with the dead bees around the hive, but my son didn't like that because he thought that since they're dead the stings might have bad bacteria on them or something.

I still didn't like killing live ones, although bees themselves are quite vicious. We see where the workers will rip off the wings of drones and throw them out of the nest to die, and most don't live that long anyway. But, I'm still soft-hearted.

To start with, we worked around the hive with no suit or protection on, hoping to get accidently stung, but it didn't happen.

After fiddling around for ages, I finally figured out how to quickly catch the bees, and to make them sting in the spot you want them to. I put them in a small container with honey after I caught them, and cooled them in the dark fridge for a couple minutes to slow them down, before stinging with them.

(SIDE: it really hurts for about ten minutes, but then give you a nice warm feeling where you are stung. Has also helped tremendously.)

At first, I let them fly away, because I heard they only live a few minutes after stinging. But they looked pretty good flying away, so I thought I'd keep a couple in the jar to see exactly how long they DO live. Well, lo and behold, they didn't die!! They are still buzzing around in a jar. The place where the stinger came out of the bee was at first oozing a bit of white goop, but now the holes are closed up and they look like ordinary bees again. I'll keep them in another day since it's raining heavily anyway, but they look eager to go home.

Maybe feeding them, or cooling them down made a difference, I don't know.

So anyway, softie that I am, I'm writing this because I see that some Apitherapists go through thousands of bees a week and just throw them away, assuming they are going to "die within minutes" anyway - consider letting them fly away instead!! Our bee population is already struggling...

Nice post. I am really looking forward to hearing the remainder of your findings.

Yeah, very interesting post and I'm glad to hear our little friends are still alive!

I hope your therapy goes well, OP.

horrible little things, "friends" lol, they certainly die when I stomp on them!

reply to post by blueorder


Those "horrible little things" are one of the most important organisms on the planet ... there are over 130,000 plants that need to bees to pollenate ... melons, pumpkins, fruit trees and feed for livestock to name a few ... your life would be far, far worse if there were no bees.

And on topic - Queen bees never die after stinging because they have no barb so they might be a more effective candidate for bees sting therapy. However there is far less Phospholipase A2 in a Queens venom than a worker ... I don't know what effect this might have on the therapy.

Edit to add - Bee Venom contains Phospholipase A2 which promotes inflammation - so bee stings, body produces cortisone to stop inflammation thus helping with the relief of MS or arthritis. Queen bee has less Phospholipase A2 than a worker bee, so less inflammation, so body produces less cortisone. Therefore Queen bee venom may be not as for effective bee sting therapy as worker bee venom.

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

This type of therapy helps with any over-active auto immune issues.

Gives the body something to attack instead of itself.

I guess if you are cooling them down before stinging with them that may affect the amount of damage that is done when the stinger & associated body parts are ripped from the bee.

Perhaps you should take this to a more formal forum for discussion - chances are if you have a good point then not a lot of bee-people are going to see it on here!!

Great links, thanks!!

I didn't know that about the queen. I know the drones don't sting at all. But isn't there only one queen in a hive? I see that some bee-keepers reproduce the queens though for new hives, I'm not sure how - looked like fiddley work to me.

There are some outfits over here that milk the venom to put in ointments for arthritis and anti-aging creams. I'm going to look into that next, as it sounds more humane, but I'm not sure how effective they are. I'm sure most people would also be more willling to rub on some cream than face a bee sting.

reply to post by thedeadtruth


Yes, you're right about the auto-immune disorders. That's the primary reason we are trying it. My son has Crohn's disease: auto-immune and "incurable". He said he definitely felt better after his first sting. If his weight changes we'll know if it has been helpful.

I also have had very very aching feet and joints for the last year and a half, with no help from conventional meds. They ache for an hour or more each morning until I get moving. After a week of stings I'm finding the achiness is gone - but will it last if I stop stinging? I don't know. My feet sure swell up each time, unless I sting in the heel or pads, then I don't feel it at all. But maybe it is not effective that way.

My feet and hands have been feeling warmer, I usually have poor circulation.

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


You're absolutely right about that - but I don't know any formal discussion boards. Did you mean on bee board sites of some sort? Since I'm new to this I don't know any yet, but I'm sure I'll become familiar with all this stuff in the next few months and find some sites to post on. I understand there are some bee-keeper meetings once a month down south I may try to go to also.

Please post this info yourself anyone who is involved with or cars about bees!! I feel bad that so many are just dumped.

Update on my little friends in the container. They're something to watch! After I first put them in, they had a big "discussion" with each other. One would make a lot of little head and hand movements, the other would watch, and then answer back with it's own head movements - they communicated back and forth for a while (maybe saying something like "that bloody human!! I can't believe what just happened!!") and then they hugged and groomed each other maybe to make each other feel better. What social little creatures!

After a day in the container they looked a bit depressed, so I gave them a little hunk of beeswax and they got quite excited and seem happy busily working on their beeswax. I wasn't sure how long I should keep them to prove to myself that they really stay alive after stinging (and they definitely gave a good sting and left the stinger in!) It's stopped raining now so I think I will send them to bed back to their beehive when it gets dusk (New Zealand time). I'm wondering if the other bees will react to them?

Edit to add, you can log in to the International Bee Research Association site to discuss these matters....



reply to post by ovumcranium


The average worker bee lives six weeks in the summer.
Source

Honeybees are not native to North America. Who knew that? It's in the link above.

As far as whether the workers die after stinging, I'm going to tend to believe the crew at the link below. You should keep the bees for more than a day to say the don't die, JMO.


International Bee Research Association

Q: Honey bees die after stinging, do bumble bees die also? A: No. Honey bee workers (non-reproducing females) have barbs on the sting that get stuck in the victim's skin. As the bee struggles to free itself, the sting and venom sac are pulled out of the bee, resulting in death. Bumble bees do not have barbed stings and can sting many times if they want to. However, bumble bees are not aggressive and only sting if provoked.

Well OP, get some video footage and prove the skeptics wrong mate!
Words have got our attention but now we need deeds!
Provable deeds that is

reply to post by WatchRider


OK, I will try!! I've got to figure out how though, give me a few days - maybe a week even! I've never made a youtube vid, but always wanted an excuse to figure out how. I've got a video camera and also can take clips on the phone - any advice would be appreciated.

How can I show they stay alive though? Like, does anyone want to watch a video for over a day or what? Will you believe me if I say this is the same bee a day later? The websites mostly say they only live a couple minutes, surely I should only have to show they live more than a couple minutes for some DECENT researcher to look at the issue properly (not an idiot like me!)

On another note, I'm still concerned about the "social" implications for the bee. A couple bees I kept for over 30 hours I put back at the hive. One looked to be accepted just fine, and then flew off, but the other had bees crawling all over it. Maybe it smelled too good of honey, or just wasn't well and they were trying to kill it, or they were just being friendly. I watched for only about 10 seconds and took it back out. I put it a bigger plastic container with some egg cartons and put some old drones that were kicked out to keep it company. My bee nursing home to speak. Then I decided to put in a couple ordinary bees in to see how long they also last in captivity. They all seemed happy enough all day, the drones liked to crawl upside down. But uh oh, it got too cold overnight and they were ALL dead in the morning. I felt pretty s hi tty, they probably need the hive and a bunch of other bees to keep warm.

So I'll have to figure out how to keep my new nursing home warmer I guess....

Maybe it's just kinder to let them fly off immediately. Each day they live past stinging is like 2 years in a human life (42 days life span of a bee?) I wouldn't want to be in a bucket of unhappy discarded humans for two years. Or maybe it's kinder to just kill them quickly if they are in pain. How the hell do you know if a bee is in pain - huh?

I met a bee-keeper who said he gives his bees apple cider vinegar when they get a stomach ache. Stomach ache??? How does he decide that? I guess I should have asked...

Well anyway, I guess I have a new hobby which is proving to be entertaining. Not bad if it keeps me off this bloody computer I suppose....

Hey, I got stung by a bee two days ago when I tried dusting it off my hair. (Quite by mistake. I didnt imagine a bee hanging around in my bedroom at 1 am on the 8th floor of a multistory building and thought it to be a pesky bug or fly, till I felt the nasty sting). I believed what I had heard earlier that bees die soon after stinging, so I dusted it off my bed and ran about getting ice for my finger. Surprisingly, after about 10 minutes, I saw it crawling around, but still alive. I placed it in the balcony just to make sure it didnt get trampled on by mistake... Its bad enough that the poor things intestines had been ripped out and kept an eye on it till I was awake. And it was still alive! It didnt seem in good shape though as it wasnt flying. Just crawling around. I feel terrible for having dusted if off the bed roughly, believing it was about to die. If had seen your article earlier, maybe some of the ice I had dipped my finger in would have helped the poor chap live out its life. (Dont know if it lived to fly away or died eventually and then got blown off the balcony with the breeze). Curiosity made me google how long they survive after a sting when I came across your article. Glad I read this. I believe you are on to something important and I hope your bee experiments prove to be ground breaking for them.