Bee sting

[lornem]

Nearly stung me when i took this ....

Tried selling me a jar of honey for £20

http://www.freemyimage.com/ims/pic.php?u=2846F7LRS&i=38501

[LensBaby]

Andy close your eyes! That is one HUGE bee. UGH I do not like when bees come near me. I would be afraid to get close to one like that.

[jerryph]

Look, I think he is sticking his tongue out at us... cheeky bee!

Nice pic, its not often you will be able to get that close for sure. Do that to some african killer bees down south and be prepared to run for miles. They aggressively defend their space, and look at someone walking into it as an intruder and can attack.

I loved living down south, but I love winters for one reason... none of those freaky bugs or snakes or spiders up here. ;)

[LensBaby]

Andy did you hear that? :D

[Snappers]

Trust me, My eyes are firmly shut!!!!!!!!!

The reason I like a good strong winter i.e. heavy frosts etc is because if we dont get a bad winter, the little creatures survive to last another year! That's double the amount we should have.

Ah well, off to the shop now to buy some more wasp/bee killer spray

[angierae]

I loved living down south, but I love winters for one reason... none of those freaky bugs or snakes or spiders up here. ;)

All that's made up for by the mosquitoes though. They make it through anything. I bet if we had a nuclear fallout they'd last even longer than the cockroaches.

[jerryph]

All that's made up for by the mosquitoes though. They make it through anything. I bet if we had a nuclear fallout they'd last even longer than the cockroaches.

Already proven that the last remaining thing that would survive would be cockroaches. The next species to take over the earth are big walking, talking, evolved bugs! :eek: :D

[ladyups]

[quote=lornem;8391]Nearly stung me when i took this ....

Tried selling me a jar of honey for £20

Is this Virginia Bluebells? I've seen fields of them but never up close. Great capture, by the way...glad you didn't disturb him.

[jerryph]

Ordinary bees take quite a lot of pushing around before they get aggressive. I've literally pushed a bee off a flower and though likely a little insulted, it did not do anything more than slowly fly away to another flower to continue his work.

Other kinds of bees can get aggressive, though.

[Snappers]

A Bee will only sting if it is threatened etc because once a bee stings you it then dies. However a wasp can sting many times without dying! Hense why wasps are more annoying!

[angierae]

Most of the time wasps don't even sting you, they tend to bite more. If you look closely you'll see two puncture wounds instead of just one.

[Snappers]

I was intreiged by your comment angie so I did a little research and this is what I found on an invertebrates forum:-


I might add that the North American 'yellowjacket' is the equivalent to what we in Britain refer to as a common wasp (Vespula vulgaris). All of the European social wasps (the majority of which have the classic black and yellow stripes) sting as a means of defense, by using a modified ovipositor (egg laying tube) connected to a poison sac. The lack of barbs on the sting (unlike the famous honey bee, for instance) enables the wasp to sting a foe multiple times.

The 'social wasps' form only a very small percentage of the total number of wasp species on the planet, the majority of the rest being parasitic or parisititoid egg layers (laying their eggs in or on host species such as spiders or caterpillars). Again, the ovipositor is modified for the different requirements. Ichneumonid wasps have particularly long ovipositors for boring through bark and wood to lay their eggs on beetle grubs living within, whilst spider-hunting wasps sting and paralyse their victims, drag them to a burrow and lay an egg on the still living spider.

As a short aside, there is a funky wasp that preys on cockroaches. Cockroaches have a ‘scuttle’ mechanism when a light comes on or they’re threatened (quite obviously). However, when attacked by this particular wasp, the wasp stings the cockroach in the thorax and causes it’s front legs to temporarily buckle. As the ‘roach collapses forwards, the wasp stings the ‘roach for a second time, this time using a very precise sting into the ‘brain’ of the cockroach and injecting venom. This turns off the ‘scuttle’ mechanism, whereupon the wasp leads the placid cockroach to a selected hole / borrow, where the wasp lays an egg inside the cockroach. Grisly but very cool! Read more about the experiment to demonstrate this here: http://www.bgu.ac.il/life/Faculty/Liber … .2003b.pdf

In short, the ‘wasps’ as a group have diverse uses for their ‘stings’ but none of the social wasps bite as a defence mechanism and as far as I’m aware, none of the other wasps bite for anything other than prey dismemberment. Here is a brief overview I've just found about Hymenoptera: http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/hym/overview.html



It's amazing what one can learn from the internet. What ever would we have done before it? :)

[Snappers]

And after reading all that about bees and wasps I just know I am going to have nightmares tonight!!!!!

[angierae]

Apparently I know socially defective wasps lol That or they just want me for supper :/

I didn't look up every kind of wasp mentioned in the article however and I didn't click on the links (my dial up is anti link) but I will concur I've only ever been stung by the yellow and black wasps, aka yellowjackets, never bitten. It's the ones that we around here call blackjackets, whether rightly or wrongly I've no clue, that tend to bite. They're a very aggressive wasp and only white and black, no yellow. I've actually had one fly up, all by itself, in the middle of a slough, and bite me on the eyebrow. Maybe it was practicing to be a horse fly. While they would make striking photo subjects because of their colours, I think I'll just leave the black and white ones alone until they're dead in the window sills :D