Anyone who keeps bees knows that at some point, hopefully ‘later’
rather than ‘sooner’, (but almost never ‘never’!) they will be stung. Honey
bees are not usually aggressive, but they are sensitive to being disturbed, and
can quickly feel threatened by the presence of anything that distracts them
from their work. Their reaction is to defend the colony and this often includes
deploying their stings. It’s not true that all bees die when they sting – if
they can retract the barb, the mechanism by which the venom is delivered,
they’ll live, but often the barb is fatally ripped out of their bodies. Being
stung therefore isn’t great for the bee or the person being stung and so it
makes sense to disturb them as little as possible and for us to wear adequate
protective clothing when we do want to be working with our bees.
