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.
Because bee stingers are mostly used against other insects. They don’t get stuck in a chitin exoskeleton, only in the more flexible skin tissue of mammals. In insects the barbs instead pull out soft tissue from inside, thus making them more lethal (to the bees victim).
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.
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.
Because bee stingers are mostly used against other insects. They don’t get stuck in a chitin exoskeleton, only in the more flexible skin tissue of mammals. In insects the barbs instead pull out soft tissue from inside, thus making them more lethal (to the bees victim).
Bee genetics are wild and helped develop a system where it doesn’t matter that the workers have tendencies to off themselves.
The worker bees do not reproduce, so their survival after stinging is not that important.
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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.