It is known that when bees sting other creatures, the stinger remains in the skin of the stung creature, which separates the bee’s entrails, leading to its death. Is this accurate, and why have bees evolved in this way that leads to their death after stinging, and why does the bee make this decision that leads to its death in the first place?
To answer these questions, several important axes of this research must be clarified. First, we must clarify the idea of genetic investment and how reproductive strategies develop in nature based on it.
Genetic investment is the percentage of investment that parents place in their genes in making the reproductive process successful. For example, you consider a genetic investment to your parents, who invested about 50% of their genes to produce you. Of course, these percentages are approximate percentages to clarify the idea and vary in reality.
The only direct reason I exist today and my ability to write this article is because my genes are programmed to reproduce. My ancestors reproduced hundreds of millions of years ago until the chain reached me today.
In my role, I also do everything I can to spread my DNA to the next generation, but this process is not exclusively limited to sexual reproduction. Of course, direct sexual intercourse guarantees the continuity of 50% of my DNA, but I also contribute to spreading my genes by helping my brother spread his genes. I help spread my genes by helping my cousins, and I contribute to spreading my genes by taking care of my grandchildren and all members of my family. As long as my family members succeed in continuing across generations, a significant percentage of my genes are passed down through generations through them. If we collect my family members as a whole, we find that the genetic investment in them may reach 600% of my original genes.
Family bonding is an instinctive bond in which each individual works to contribute to the spread of his genes by helping his relatives. This means that when your brother helps you, he is doing so to contribute to spreading his genes, and when you help your cousins, you are also contributing to spreading your genes. Thus, the rate of genetic investment declines until we reach other species, ending with bacteria, for example. This means that our sympathy for living people results from our desire to help them spread their genes, which may be similar to our genes, even if the similarity is relatively small compared to our human relatives and acquaintances.
Nice, but what does all this have to do with the subject of the question?
Understanding the genetic investment of organisms explains their reproductive strategies. Reproduction in bees differs greatly from reproduction in mammals, which results in different survival strategies and actions that may appear to us as sacrifice or suicide because our perspective on actions from our concept of reproduction differs when understanding the strategies of other organisms.
The male bee fertilizes the female only once in his life, and the female maintains all the necessary sperm reserves for successful reproduction throughout her life.
Here it is necessary to examine a little because the idea may become a bit complex. The male who impregnated the female has exactly identical sperm (no variation or genetic difference in them). I will explain why shortly, but this means that all the children who will be born as a result of his insemination will be identical to a very high percentage, because the mother’s chromosomes + the father’s identical chromosomes are what will form the children.
Now we have an inseminated female with a large supply of identical sperm. The female bee controls when she fertilizes her eggs with these stored sperm. If she lays unfertilized eggs, she will produce males (so the male who will fertilize the females in the future has genetically identical animals because he is the product of an unfertilized female egg (100% of the mother’s genes).) If the female fertilizes her eggs with the sperm she has stored, she will lay eggs that will result in females, and these females will be genetically close because they are the result of sperm identical to their mother’s eggs, which are relatively close in DNA.
For fear of complicating this axis further, the basic idea here is that the reproductive process in bees depends on the queen, who in turn organizes the reproductive process within the hive. The guarantee of the continuation of the offspring for each member of the cell does not depend on his own safety, but rather on the safety of the queen and her ability to continue laying eggs. The queen’s children (males or females) are unable to reproduce and are completely dependent on the queen for continued reproduction.
Over time, one of the females turns into a queen (due to the type of food she eats), but she leaves the hive in search of a male to fertilize her in order to start a new hive on her own. This means that if I were a bee, my only way to continue and reproduce is by ensuring the safety of the hive in general and the queen in particular. My future offspring are the result of one of the females being fertilized after she left the hive by another male and therefore my personal safety is not important for the continuation of my offspring.
This idea directly affects how the bee deals with risks that may lead to the cessation of its offspring.
We defend our children because they are the guarantors of the continuation of our offspring in the future, but in the case of bees, each individual defends the hive as a whole because the continuation of his offspring depends on the survival of the hive and not his personal safety. Since bees cannot reproduce except through the queen, the death of any member of the hive is not a problem for this individual as long as the hive is in good health, unlike the case of mammals where they must care for their children until they reach the reproductive stage.
Well, now I can address the second axis of the answer, which is why bees evolved so that they die when they sting. In fact, there is a problem in presenting the idea here, since bees did not evolve to die after stinging, but rather the process of stinging did not evolve against mammals and creatures with hard skin, but rather against other insects. This means that a bee can sting other insects several times without dying. However, the skin of humans and other mammals is tough, which leads to the bee’s entrails attached to the stinger being uprooted after the sting. The reason for the continuation of the phenomenon of death after stinging and the absence of extinction or natural selection of bees is due to the reproductive strategy of bees, as the death of individuals does not affect the genetic future of these individuals as long as the queen is fine.
So, when a bee stings a human, its goal is not to carry out a suicide operation, but as a result of the development of its stinger to defend against other insects, which does not help it sting creatures with tough skin like humans, but because of its reproductive strategy, its death does not affect the continuation of its offspring, and therefore there is no evolutionary pressure to change this feature.
I have no evidence, but it is possible to assume that the development of human skin in this way is a kind of arms race in nature, as humans relied heavily on stealing honey from bees, and the development of skin that resists bee stings is considered a beneficial feature to the point that it gives priority to survival compared to humans who have skin. Less thickness (just an assumption). Genetic continuity explains why bees do not become deterred or become extinct, although other bees have been observed to die after stinging creatures with thick skin. The bee’s goal is to defend the hive, not to defend himself, in order to continue his lineage across generations.
Bees do not sting unless they sense danger facing the hive. The stinging process produces pheromones (a chemical signal) to all bees present near the place that there is danger and that everyone must contribute to defending the hive.
Bees, in normal circumstances, can sting without dying. Therefore, when the decision is made to attack a mammal, for example, this decision is not a suicidal decision, but rather a defensive decision that results in the death of the bees as a result of the thickening of the skin. However, because some people suffer from the problem of anthropocentrism, it has become common to assume that bees die when they sting anything. Bees die because of the thickness of human skin, but they can sting other creatures several times without dying.
Information:
The name “Queen Bee” is inaccurate and does not describe the work of this bee.
The queen has one goal in life, which is to lay eggs and care for them while the members of the cell protect her and prevent her from moving so that she can continue to reproduce. In practice, the queen is a captive of the cell and is the only one unable to move because she must continue to produce and incubate eggs.
If the incubator “queen” begins to fail in her job of producing eggs, the cell members lay a new queen and then kill the old one.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/honeybee-sting-kill-bee
