[Seany (OP)]

Just curious..  []

[neilep]

Just curious..  []

Wocha Seany me old youngy !!

That's a good question !!....

there must be something in the bees instinct that I would assume would let it know that once it's stung it's ' bye bye Earth' time.....but this would be at a Bees level of intelligence and perception !

..all bees are martyrs to the cause !!.."the need of the many outweigh the need of the few....or the one".........which is a shame cos as ewe know I luff bees and luff stroking them !

[Karen W.]

Wait yellow jackets can sting you repeatedly am I wrong in assuming that they don't die after they sting. I know many loose their stinger leaving  the site of the sting with their stinger and a portion of their abdomen attached to your sting hole! LOL

[paul.fr]

Does a bee know that if it stings you, it will have it's abdomen ripped out, be in terrible pain and die? I would like to think not, otherwise we have some pretty evil bees out there who think that is worth going through just to sting you.

I personally prefer to think they do not know, and that their actions are just defensive.

[Seany (OP)]

So it's just instictive, the way that they sting us, as an action of defense?

[Karen W.]

Does a bee know that if it stings you, it will have it's abdomen ripped out, be in terrible pain and die? I would like to think not, otherwise we have some pretty evil bees out there who think that is worth going through just to sting you.

I personally prefer to think they do not know, and that their actions are just defensive.

Oh I agree about there actions being defensive.. I was only questioning the difference between a say bumble bee and yellow jacket dieing after the sting, as a yellow jacket usually keeps its stinger and can sting many time, but do they also die like their counterpart who gets his tummy and stinger left at the scene! LOL Do you know!!

Yes I believe I read something about bees putting some kind of pheromone out when one is in danger and they all swarm to the defence of the other who has stung its victim, I assume the act stinging produces it and they do it automatically. Surely like paul said and I agree that they do not know they will die!.. I am no expert either but it is a good question!

[neilep]

All we can ever do is speculate.


Bee have barbed stingers, when they sting the sting stays in and the bee goes off an dies. I doubt a bee has any kind of sentience to be aware of it's own existence. It has a natural instinct for preservation....if the instinct for self preservation was so strong then I don't think it would sting in the first place....this is a ' hive mind' mentally here...not individuality !

[another_someone]

Wait yellow jackets can sting you repeatedly am I wrong in assuming that they don't die after they sting. I know many loose their stinger leaving  the site of the sting with their stinger and a portion of their abdomen attached to your sting hole! LOL

Wasps do not have barbed stingers, and so they do not die after stinging.  Worker bees do die after stinging (apparently not queen bees - but queen bees do not normally leave the hive).

[another_someone]

I doubt a bee has any kind of sentience to be aware of it's own existence. It has a natural instinct for preservation....if the instinct for self preservation was so strong then I don't think it would sting in the first place....this is a ' hive mind' mentally here...not individuality !

What you have to remember is that all of the workers in the hive are identical twins.  The question is whether you would give your life to protect your identical twin?

[kdlynn]

well they must know that they can't just go around stinging everything or they would have all killed themselves by now... right?

[another_someone]

well they must know that they can't just go around stinging everything or they would have all killed themselves by now... right?

Bees will normally only sting if they think they have no chance of survival anyway (you may kill me, but I will make sure I cause as much damage to you as I can before you do); or to protect their sibling in the hive.  They do not normally just go about stinging things at random.

It is dubious as to whether they have any concious knowledge of anything (least of all their mortality), but there is no doubt that their genes do know what is in the best interests of the species, and so have programmed the bee to use its sting only where it is necessary for it to do so.

In terms of protecting the hive, I think you might think of a stinging worker bee as a kamikaze pilot who, like the Kamikaze Japanese pilots of WWII, were willing to lay down their lives in the hope that they were protecting their kith and kin in the homeland of Japan.

[neilep]

I doubt a bee has any kind of sentience to be aware of it's own existence. It has a natural instinct for preservation....if the instinct for self preservation was so strong then I don't think it would sting in the first place....this is a ' hive mind' mentally here...not individuality !

What you have to remember is that all of the workers in the hive are identical twins.  The question is whether you would give your life to protect your identical twin?

yes, but only a BEE can really answer that !..and I suspect the answer is that it would !

[Karen W.]

All we can ever do is speculate.


Bee have barbed stingers, when they sting the sting stays in and the bee goes off an dies. I doubt a bee has any kind of sentience to be aware of it's own existence. It has a natural instinct for preservation....if the instinct for self preservation was so strong then I don't think it would sting in the first place....this is a ' hive mind' mentally here...not individuality !

Yes true as we don't know what a be thinks, or if it does! LOL

I agree with you !

[Karen W.]

Wait yellow jackets can sting you repeatedly am I wrong in assuming that they don't die after they sting. I know many loose their stinger leaving  the site of the sting with their stinger and a portion of their abdomen attached to your sting hole! LOL

Wasps do not have barbed stingers, and so they do not die after stinging.  Worker bees do die after stinging (apparently not queen bees - but queen bees do not normally leave the hive).

Thanks George I did not recall that about the barbed stingers. That is good information..

[paul.fr]

In terms of protecting the hive, I think you might think of a stinging worker bee as a kamikaze pilot who, like the Kamikaze Japanese pilots of WWII, were willing to lay down their lives in the hope that they were protecting their kith and kin in the homeland of Japan.

Are you saying that a bee, knows it's family and heritage? And that it consciously stings as an act of denfence knowing it will die? That they are knowingly laying down their life to save the hive?

[another_someone]

Are you saying that a bee, knows it's family and heritage? And that it consciously stings as an act of denfence knowing it will die? That they are knowingly laying down their life to save the hive?

It depends on what you mean by 'know'.

It does know who its siblings are insofar as it knows that its siblings smell very similar to itself (and if a bee that smells different, then it will be attacked as a foreigner - an illegal alien that should be killed on sight).

But this knowledge is unlikely to be concious, but it is nonetheless information it acts upon, and information upon which it makes decisions on how to act.  Nonetheless, as subconscious as these decisions may be, the outcomes are not that different to the decisions humans would make in similar circumstances with all their supposed superior decision making process (this is not to say that humans cannot apply technically better solutions, but the objectives they would apply those solutions to are not significantly different to the objectives and value sets a bee would use).  The Kamikaze pilots were using the same value judgements and objectives as the bee, they just used more sophisticated technology to achieve it.

[neilep]

As a firm believer of empirical study I spared no expense and set up with some rival networks to question a Bee about it's self preservation cognitive ability .

Hours were spent hashing out the deal with agents, networks, organizing air play and commercial breaks as well as all the follow on T shirts, Action Figures , computer games and film rights etc etc etc........... !!...hearts were broken...families split...tempers frought .............but...we managed to come to an agreement in the end....

 [ Invalid Attachment ]


Bugger !!!

[Karen W.]

LOL LOL!! Thats is very cute! LOL!

[dkv]

The responsibility of a soldier is to defend and protect its Group. And in the process if it dies then thats the part of the game.
Soldier gets may benefits in shared world of bees.
Among different similar species the soldier bee rules.
They can take over their habitat if required.They can kill other bees. They feed on others food.
With so many priviledges comes a little prices of
possible death in an emergency.

[another_someone]

The responsibility of a soldier is to defend and protect its Group. And in the process if it dies then thats the part of the game.
Soldier gets may benefits in shared world of bees.
Among different similar species the soldier bee rules.
They can take over their habitat if required.They can kill other bees. They feed on others food.
With so many priviledges comes a little prices of
possible death in an emergency.

There are soldier ants, but not soldier bees - there are worker bees.  Bees are not carnivorous, and do not take over the hives of other existing colonies of bees (some ants do behave that way, but bees do not).

In most social insects, the society is controlled by the pheromones released by the queen.