[HN Gopher] Why do bees die when they sting you?
___________________________________________________________________
Why do bees die when they sting you?
Author : yamrzou
Score : 177 points
Date : 2022-12-26 11:20 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.subanima.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.subanima.org)
| rnd0 wrote:
| Honestly, I'm more curious about the way that wasps evolved and
| what path that took. Especially since it seems like they have
| managed to adapt (in some cases) to living eusocially without
| sacrificing individual members.
| dejj wrote:
| That, and why don't worker bees heal to continue working
| without stinger, instead of dying?
|
| Do bees ever heal? Is perhaps the cost of evolving a genetic
| apparatus for large-scale repairs higher than just birthing
| another individual in the comb?
| hackernewds wrote:
| you could have argue bees vastly outperform and outnumber wasps
| perhaps due to their evolutionary advantages
| mvidal01 wrote:
| I think the book The World of Bees by Charles D. Michener
| covers that subject. There's a pdf of that book on the net.
| forinti wrote:
| In my experience, a wasp's sting hurts a whole lot more. One bee
| sting doesn't even hurt much; many probably do. OTOH, you hardly
| ever find a wasp's nest as large as a typical bee hive. So maybe
| it makes sense for wasps to have better weapons and try to save
| every individual.
| digitalsushi wrote:
| I was removing an old raised bed from the previous owners,
| using a 20 pound sledge hammer. I got stung by a yellow jacket
| on the wrist, and it hurt as much as a toddler would playing
| with a rubber band.
|
| It took me a few moments to understand what was happening - and
| I ran into the house, bringing seveal more with me. One got
| into my shirt and stung me under my arm, and that felt like
| purple. I balistically punched myself in instinct until they
| were all dead.
|
| Then I learned how it works. You get tagged by the first
| hornet. They have a little scent that is a 'tracer', and once
| they see it, you're marked. Many, many times now I have been
| tagged by an angry yellow jacket and run to safety before the
| first stinging. There's about a second or two where your muscle
| memory can sprint you out of their area, about 300 feet. Often
| they will be found slamming the back door for several minutes,
| trying to follow me.
|
| They hate percussive vibrations. Walking, sledgehammering,
| digging. They have two entrances to their nests, always a hole
| in the ground. I own a bee suit and will just go dig it up with
| a shovel now. I think it's still legal to do in my state. I
| really hate yellow jackets, I'm sorry but I can't see what they
| are bringing other than their rage.
| rolph wrote:
| this is also the case with bees, the sting, venom and venom
| sac are a tag
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| > and that felt like purple.
|
| Is this a commonly known idiom? I've never heard it, and I
| Googled to no avail.
| to11mtm wrote:
| > One bee sting doesn't even hurt much; many probably do.
|
| It kinda depends on where, too.
|
| My only bee sting was on my chin (during recess in grade
| school) and it was definitely more painful than the wasp stings
| I've received on other parts of the body.
| anlsh wrote:
| Great little refresher on how hymenopteran genetics advantages
| eusociality! I do wish that it made an effort to address why bees
| are different in this regard from other eusocial hymenopterans
| such as wasps though (ie, why do _bees_ die when they string
| you?). But at least it 's a neat little mystery to appreciate:)
| NautilusWave wrote:
| This article is correct in being cautious about "why" questions,
| but for the wrong reason. On science topics, people often ask
| "why" when they should ask "how". Things don't happen for
| reasons; they happen via mechanisms. Asking "why" tends to lead
| to answers that imply human-like intentionality where it doesn't
| exist.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The "why" for this sort of question is there must be some
| evolutionary advantage, what is it?
| smt88 wrote:
| No, there doesn't have to be an evolutionary advantage. Some
| things just exert no significant selective pressure and are
| incidental.
| rogers18445 wrote:
| A bee colony is to a bee what you are to one of your cells. The
| author's attempts to apply group selection, kin selection or even
| natural selection to individual bees is a misunderstanding of
| what is happening.
|
| There is no selfish calculus possible for individuals within a
| colony, they are all parts of the whole. Even the queen can get
| killed by the other bees if there is a younger more fit queen.
|
| Male bees leave the hive every day to fly to a congregation area
| to mate with potential queens. They are quite literally analogous
| to sperm cells.
| stokesr wrote:
| Absolutely brilliant article, really enjoyed it!
| scaredginger wrote:
| Bees dying after stinging really highlights the question of what
| an organism is to me. It seems similar to routine cell death; the
| organism (hive) keeps thriving. In the grand scheme of things,
| the individual doesn't matter
| kyleyeats wrote:
| It's kind of an illusion that organisms reproduce.
| _Populations_ reproduce. The real thing is the super-organism
| and the false idea is the organism.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Since the big thing is mostly made of small things, neglecting
| small things systematically is probably not a good idea.
| the_af wrote:
| It's not neglect. A tiny part of the hive dies fending off
| something that would be harmful to the colony, which is the
| true reproductive superorganism.
| scaredginger wrote:
| Perhaps I'm oversimplifying, but if this neglect results in
| independent random events of destruction of these individual
| small things, it'll average out, so it's fine as long as they
| can be replaced
| hbarka wrote:
| I'm reminded of infantry soldiers
| scaredginger wrote:
| Seems very macabre to try and apply the idea to human
| populations, but I suppose this did more or less happen
| in WWI on the Western Front...
| hbarka wrote:
| There was a scene in All Quiet On The Western Front where
| upon the signing of the armistice, an hour or so was left
| before the effective time of cessation. A brutal German
| general who was aware of this orders his troops to have
| one more charge. They were already celebrating the end of
| the war.
| [deleted]
| h0l0cube wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > To see this, we can look at our own immune systems. For
| instance, immune cells inside your body known as neutrophils
| are just as suicidal as the worker bees. When bacteria invade
| your body, neutrophils migrate to the site of infection,
| unleash a whole cocktail of toxins onto the bacteria, and then
| proceed to die within 1-2 days. In both cases, the suicidal
| nature of neutrophils and that of worker bees benefit the
| bigger entity that surrounds them. For worker bees, their death
| may save the colony from Winnie the Pooh, and the death of
| Neutrophils may save you from dying from a bacterial infection.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| I ATEN'T DEAD
| yamrzou wrote:
| This question is beautifully explored in a video by the same
| author of the submitted article: _Organisms Are Not Made Of
| Atoms_ - https://youtu.be/vaJcmWjMNwo
| igammarays wrote:
| Why does every feature of every living thing have to have an
| evolutionary explanation? The author struggles to look for a
| natural selection explanation for honeybee stingers and then
| hand-waves away all that useless speculation by simply noting
| that other species of bees and wasps "followed a different
| evolutionary path". Why even bother speculate then? Different
| things are just different, I don't need an evolutionary
| explanation for that.
|
| In fact, I would say this cult-like insistence on making up an
| evolutionary explanation for everything, which cannot be tested
| or falsified, and employing mental gymnastics to find any reason
| to fit the theory (instead of testing hypotheses by
| experimentation) sounds more like a conspiracy theory than
| science.
| kortex wrote:
| > Why does every feature of every living thing have to have an
| evolutionary explanation?
|
| This phrasing implies the premise is true, which I don't agree
| with, so I am going to tackle 3 related questions:
|
| - Why does /any phenomenon/ require explanation?
|
| Because we are curious, and want to know how and why things do
| what they do. Answers lead to more questions, to more answers,
| in a loop of learning
|
| - Why do all biological phenomena need an evolutionary
| explanation?
|
| Because outside of artificial selection, natural selection is
| the only causal mechanism (outside of pure chance). Mitosis,
| Miosis, and Mutation are the building blocks.
|
| But much of that boils down to, "why is x the way it is?
| Because chance". which is not very interesting, which leads
| to...
|
| - Why does bee sting suicide in particular warrant an
| explanation?
|
| Because under a naive understanding of evolution, it is a
| paradox. Also, there was a time when proto-hymenoptera were not
| eusocial, so how did they become eusocial? Those are really
| interesting problems to look at.
|
| You are right in pointing out that pop-sci evolutionary
| handwavy explanations are a problem. But I don't think that is
| common in the broad science in biology.
| igammarays wrote:
| > natural selection is the only causal mechanism (outside of
| pure chance)
|
| It is this particular cult-like insistence on the omnipotence
| of natural selection that I challenge. Maybe there are other
| causal mechanisms? In any case, it needs to be a falsifiable
| hypothesis before we can call it "science". Can you prove
| natural selection caused this particular feature of suicidal
| honeybees? Even if we assume the author's natural selection
| explanation makes sense, the causal mechanism is FAR from
| clear.
|
| My complaint is, biologists are wrong by limiting themselves
| ONLY to the evolutionary toolbox instead of seeking other
| causal mechanisms. And it looks like a conspiracy theory when
| the come up with fanciful unfalsifiable unprovable
| "evolutionary" explanations of everything.
|
| > Because under a naive understanding of evolution, it is a
| paradox.
|
| Then maybe the response should be, something is wrong with
| the theory of evolution, i.e. the theory of evolution cannot
| explain every feature of every living being, and we need not
| pretend it can.
| yamrzou wrote:
| By the same logic nothing requires explanation. Everything is
| just different, or everything is just the way it is.
|
| I think your question is still interesting, so let me ask you:
| When does a phenomenon require an explanation in your opinion?
| igammarays wrote:
| I say the question "why do honeybees die when they sting" is
| interesting, but the answer need not necessarily be made in
| an evolutionary framework. A scientifically testable
| hypothesis would be more productive, or simply appreciate the
| pros and cons of a suicidal stinger without trying to overfit
| an evolutionary model.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| So if humans are a group, and altruism is something to be valued,
| are elites (1% of the 1%) simply those who have found ways to
| bend the group altruism to their benefit - and found stories like
| honour and sacrifice that guide others while they make no such
| sacrifice?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| One could also ask, "What good does it do for an insect to taste
| bad to birds? By the time the insect gets 'tasted' it's already
| dead."
|
| Very simply, animals learn to avoid such insects. The same simple
| explanation - absent much of any concept of selfish or altruistic
| behavior - probably applies to bees as well, regardless of their
| colony structure. Once an animal is stung by a bee, it learns to
| avoid bees, which reduces predatory pressure on all bees
| (including bee mimic species).
|
| The other primary role of the stinger is in defense of the hive,
| i.e. colony survival. That's a more direct group selection
| concept, as if the queen and some drones survive an attack on the
| colony, new generations can be bred, so an aggressive pheromone-
| trigger response by workers is likely.
|
| Furthermore, one must always consider in evolution the role of
| accident and misfortune. For example, walking upright in humans
| is widely considered to have been a beneficial evolutionary
| development, as humans were able to spread onto the plains and
| were no longer limited to living in forests. So is the
| development of a large brain. However, together those factors
| make childbirth more difficult for human females relative to
| other mammals. This wasn't a desirable outcome, more of a side
| effect. Bee stingers lodging in some of their targets may be a
| similar issue - i.e. an accident of evolution, not something
| chosen by selection.
| svnt wrote:
| > However, together those factors make childbirth more
| difficult for human females relative to other mammals. This
| wasn't a desirable outcome, more of a side effect.
|
| This is a pop science concept from the 60s known as the
| obstetrical dilemma and is not well-supported by the evidence
| we have.
| kortex wrote:
| Huh, TIL that childbirth was likely challenging for other
| smaller-head hominids, not just big-brain Sapiens.
|
| Walking upright is still the strongest hypothesis for the
| difficult birth process.
|
| https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-have-figured-out-why-
| chi...
| svnt wrote:
| There is a very large difference between was and is, here.
| Human childbirth at this point is almost certainly a result
| of positive selection, not an "evolutionary accident."
|
| A "difficult birth process" has been played up in popular
| media. In the vast majority of cases, childbirth
| successfully exits a child, and also preserves the mother.
| There is some evidence that the mechanics of this process
| were better before early Western medicine's gynecological
| "expertise".
|
| The whole thing stems from inaccurate, sexist attempts from
| the 20th century to explain why women are generally
| athletically not as capable as men.
| Izkata wrote:
| A better example perhaps: Sickle cell anemia, which causes
| all sorts of health issues, also provides protection against
| malaria.
| glenstein wrote:
| >Very simply, animals learn to avoid such insects. The same
| simple explanation - absent much of any concept of selfish or
| altruistic behavior - probably applies to bees as well,
| regardless of their colony structure. Once an animal is stung
| by a bee, it learns to avoid bees, which reduces predatory
| pressure on all bees (including bee mimic species).
|
| In a thread full of Not Even Wrong answers, I would say this is
| at least the right _kind_ of answer. It stands to reason, I
| think, that barbed stinger + tear-off of stinger really does
| serve the purpose of inflicting maximal pain plus pheromone
| signalling. It 's a bit unsatisfying as an answer however, as
| it would stand to reason that the same can be achieved without
| necessarily needing to trigger the death of the bee itself.
|
| Regarding it being an accident of evolution, I would say I find
| it implausible that this one is accidental - a barbed stinger
| is specific and seemingly tailored (in a manner of speaking,
| not literally) toward a tear-off. With the example of humans
| having large brains which make childbirth difficult, by
| contrast, it's easy to see it as an unintended downstream
| consequence.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Because Zeus was offended by the nymph Melissa's request for a
| stinger to defend her honey against humans, IIRC.
| [deleted]
| gradascent wrote:
| I'm always in awe at how such a simple algorithm (natural
| selection) can create such beautifully complex systems (organisms
| or even super-organisms).
| verdenti wrote:
| What's the algorithm here? Can you whiteboard/pseudo code it
| haha?
| NathanielBaking wrote:
| As a beekeeper for several years I have posited that bees have
| evolved to die after stinging because the act of stinging can
| cause pathogens from the creature being stung to adhere to the
| stinging bee. This would create an easy vector into the hive
| where it would then spread eventually infecting the queen. It
| would be interesting if someone with some game theory experience
| could model this behavior.
| krisoft wrote:
| I'm not sure game theory experience is the missing bit here.
| What are the chances of a bee getting infected by stinging an
| intruder? What are the chances of a bee not stinging an
| intruder and getting infected? (By just doing normal bee
| business, and during a hive intrusion) What are the chances
| that the infection will spread from that bee to a next inside
| the hive? What are the consequences of an infection?
|
| Weather or not what you are saying makes sense depends on the
| answer to these questions. But these questions are not in the
| field of game theory. These are questions of bee epidemiology
| really.
| dmurray wrote:
| Also, what are the consequences to the hive of losing a bee?
| It's a pretty small energy investment to make a new one. The
| reproductive success of the bee is the reproductive success
| of the hive - it doesn't have any way to pass on its
| individual genes.
| [deleted]
| svnt wrote:
| The bees often don't die immediately, and could very well
| return to the hive. Also, except in accidents, in nature this
| death generally happens at the hive, when eg a bear is eating
| it.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| I know a reasonable amount of game theory and I think you're
| looking at the wrong field for insight. The stung animal isn't
| making a strategic choice to carry pathogens around which might
| "payback" the some hypothetical bee hive which may or may not
| sting them. From the bees perspective the choice of strategy is
| independent of any other actors strategic decisions. Its just a
| normal optimization problem, not game-theoretic coupled
| optimization problems.
| tmoertel wrote:
| In this case the actor isn't the bee but the bee's genetic
| programming, which only propagates via the queen and hive. If
| the programming allows a bee to cary a fatal disease back to
| the hive, the program ceases to propagate and may cease to
| exist. This provides strong selection pressure against
| fouling the hive.
| puffybuf wrote:
| The pathogen itself is being optimized to spread though. I
| think game theory still applies to natural selection in some
| sense.
| scott_w wrote:
| Not in this case as the pathogen isn't going to react to
| the evolutionary defences of the bee by adjusting its
| infectiousness.
| hgsgm wrote:
| [dead]
| NathanielBaking wrote:
| Good point. I took a chance with my Great Courses only
| knowledge of game theory.
|
| Another point people are pointing out is that bees don't
| usually die after stinging other bee. Other bees are the
| easiest vectors for the infections I have had to deal with. I
| wonder what evolutionary advantage of not returning to the
| hive grants when a bee stings a larger animal (mammal, bird,
| etc).
| mrtnmcc wrote:
| The mating process of the drone male bees (with suicidal
| semelparity) maybe has a more obvious (but similar?) answer
| in that they have served their role and want to maximize
| their reproductive effectiveness.
|
| Certainly attaching your venom pump to a mammal will help
| discourage it now and in the future. Given average bee
| lifetimes are 3-4 weeks anyway, it's also not much of a
| sacrifice for the hive.
|
| The genetic similarly of bees to their queen is higher
| (75%) than most species, so kinship theory may point to
| less individualistic behavior as well.
|
| https://www.lakeforest.edu/news/the-emerging-study-of-
| kinshi...
| thriftwy wrote:
| Not to their queen, but to each other.
| vanattab wrote:
| Maybe the bee dying is just the side effect of what it's
| really trying to do. Maybe if the the bees stingers did
| not have barbs they would just annoy a bear a little and
| he would happly suffer a few stings to get the honey. But
| with barbs the stinger stays in the mammal and irritates
| the skin for longer periods of time. If course this means
| the bee has its stinger ripped off and dies but his
| stinger still causes damage and has deterent affect. Also
| I imagine a bee that did not die when stinging still
| stood a good chance of dying due to slap from hand or paw
| anyway. Or if a bear is raiding hive thoese bees are died
| anyway if they don't stop him so you might as well
| inflict maximum damage
| WalterBright wrote:
| Having been stung by bees, one really wants to get the
| stinger out. If one doesn't have fingers, that could be
| very annoying to the stingee, and certainly a further
| deterrent.
| hgsgm wrote:
| [dead]
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I have posited that bees have evolved to die after stinging
| because the act of stinging can cause pathogens from the
| creature being stung to adhere to the stinging bee.
|
| OK.
|
| But why do bees die after stinging, but wasps don't.
| musingsole wrote:
| Do mammals hunt wasps for their honey?
| sorokod wrote:
| Not honey but proteins.
| Raydovsky wrote:
| Because wasps don't live in large colonies. Thus losing one
| wasp would be more damaging than the risk of infection.
|
| Also wasp nests aren't as hot and humid as bee hives
| Retric wrote:
| Bees can sting other insects just fine. Also these Bees can't
| reproduce, so that seems like an obvious difference.
|
| From the hives perspective it's a question of effectiveness
| vs the utility of individual bees remaining lifespan. Being
| even slightly more effective at discouraging mammals from
| raiding a hive for honey is presumably worth the loss of
| individual bees.
|
| Wasps on the other hand lack the wealth of a bee hive so
| presumably different tradeoffs are worthwhile.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Not every path has to converge.
| 323 wrote:
| Pathogens are pretty species specific.
|
| It's quite unlikely a bee could get infected by whatever a
| mammal is carrying.
|
| And it would be easier to evolve "needle cleaning" (flushing
| acid over it for example).
| eternalban wrote:
| I think another possible evolutionary reason may be preventing
| rogue drones.
|
| A rogue drone that can sting repeatedly is a huge risk to a
| hive since security screening is only enforced at entrance and
| the rogue one(s) are inside the hive. This way, with the one-
| shot stingers, the worst possible damage is the loss of another
| bee, and the problem drone has taken care of itself.
|
| What's your take on that hypothesis?
| [deleted]
| glompers wrote:
| But as lanrei comments, "When bees sting other insects they
| can sting them multiple times, like a wasp."
| the_af wrote:
| Do you mean rogue "worker bee" rather than "drone"? Drones
| don't have stingers.
| dejj wrote:
| During "heatballing", may bees not also contract pathogens?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I don't think game theory is involved as there is no
| 'conscious' decision involved. Your theory is purely based on
| evolution through natural selection: the death of a bee after
| it has strung would increase the survival chances of the hive
| enough that, over time that (initially random) trait would be
| favoured.
| jwarden wrote:
| Game theory doesn't have to operate at the level of
| individuals making conscious decisions. Consider the concept
| of the Evolutionary Stable Strategy:
|
| https://cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/e/Evolutiona.
| ...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| OK, thanks. Even so, IMHO this is 'simple' evolution
| through natural selection because a hive is equivalent to a
| single individual, not a population, evolutionary-speaking
| since a single individual reproduces and all the bees are
| also the offsprings of a single individual. So ultimately,
| IMHO the characteristics and behaviour of the hive only
| depend on the Queen and its survival. Which can also
| explain in part why sacrificing individual bees might be a
| successful strategy.
| raydiatian wrote:
| Always fun to see the term "super-organism" pop up.
|
| I was super fascinated with super-organisms back in college.
|
| I convinced myself that mankind counts as a super-organism
| (although I'm sure experts might disagree, with reason). We're an
| incredibly specialized bunch, the majority of us are utterly
| incapable of surviving without the tethers of civilization.
|
| And I was super enamored with the notion that the internet was a
| central nervous system for this budding Homo sapiens super
| organism, and wanted to ask interesting questions like "is the
| super-organism intelligent?" To which the answer was "if we can
| learn from our mistakes."
|
| So I'm not so sure we're an intelligent super-organism.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| What you have done, is simply added a symbol to a phenomena.
| What exactly does the symbol "super-organism" mean to you? Or
| to anyone for that matter? If it doesn't have a rigorous
| definition then it is simply a token that evokes an emotional
| reaction.
| yamrzou wrote:
| > What you have done, is simply added a symbol to a
| phenomena.
|
| Isn't that what we always do when we use language?
|
| To me a "super-organism" means seeing the whole instead of
| the parts. When I speak about myself, I don't say: my hands
| did, my feet walked. I say: I did, I walked. In my mind, I
| don't picture the multitude of cells composing my body as
| individual organisms, rather as parts of a single unit.
| Lanrei wrote:
| This article makes one assumption without justification and then
| follows it to a wrong conclusion.
|
| When bees sting other insects they can sting them multiple times,
| like a wasp. If you give them time a bee will usually be able to
| work it's stinger out of you and go on it's merry way. Their
| stingers just happen to get stuck in skin.
|
| Here's a basic video discussing the topic:
| https://youtu.be/nTVsqc2CCGo
| the_af wrote:
| It could be an adaptation for stinging mammals, where the venom
| pump would matter more than when stinging other insects.
|
| Though wasps don't need it and they are _very_ effective at
| causing pain in mammals. The article mentions different
| evolutionary paths.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Why would honey bees evolve to leave behind an autonomous pump
| with their stinger? I don't think the article suggests that all
| stings result in suicide, it merely answers the question of why
| it happens at all, and why it is peculiar to only a select
| subgroup of species in the entire animal kingdom
| watwut wrote:
| > Why would honey bees evolve to leave behind an autonomous
| pump with their stinger?
|
| Evolution is not an intentional God. It does not have plans
| and it does not think. It is a randomized process in which
| not being disadvantage too much can make the trait survive.
| glenstein wrote:
| >Why would honey bees evolve to leave behind an autonomous
| pump with their stinger?
|
| Or for that matter why would they evolve the barbed "fish
| hook" causing the stinger to stick in?
| spc476 wrote:
| And here's the video they're talking about:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-C77ujnLZo
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| I cringed thinking about this. Does anyone wait and let the bee
| leave?
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I've seen it done by someone practicing bee sting therapy.
| bmitc wrote:
| I think there are some leaps in the article, especially revolving
| around the concepts of calling this suicide or a sacrifice.
|
| First of all, not all bee species even have stingers and only
| honeybees have barbed stingers. Even then, honeybees do not
| always die when stinging animals, such as insects, as only
| mammalian and maybe avian skin is thick enough to retain the
| barb.
|
| Calling this suicide or a sacrifice seems to imply that the
| honeybee workers are aware of possible death when stinging a
| mammal, which I haven't read evidence of, and I don't think it's
| something we have the ability to know. And honeybees only live a
| few months, so it's a very human-centric viewpoint nonetheless.
|
| Is it known whether this is an evolutionary strategy vs an
| evolutionary mistake? I suppose that isn't really a question we
| can answer. The only thing I can think of is that mammals are
| larger and if the venom keeps pumping after the bee removes
| itself, then that would inject more venom. But for larger
| animals, is there a strong need for the bee to only be active in
| the sting temporarily? It seems a honeybee with a smooth barb
| could just sting a larger animal longer, removing the "need" (of
| the above hypothesis is true) of stinging for a short time but
| leaving the venom producing system behind.
| Stevvo wrote:
| Both of your "criticisms" Are discussed in the article.
| bmitc wrote:
| I read the article and didn't feel it was adequately
| addressed.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| Yes. If only people read TFA (which was very thorough) before
| opining at length:
|
| > These altruistic acts are typically not done consciously,
| they have simple been formed by natural selection to act in
| this way. For instance, your neutrophils do not consciously
| commit suicide, they have just been shaped to do that by
| evolution. And of course you don't go out thinking "Hm yes I
| will save you two from drowning because you are each 5/8
| related to me." Although maybe one biologist did actually
| think like this.
| bmitc wrote:
| See other comment. The article does a lot of bouncing
| around this and frequently refers to suicide and sacrifice
| without qualification.
| glenstein wrote:
| I feel like ordinary good faith is enough to make sense
| of how the article is using those terms and the
| qualification is indeed there, and quoted above.
| bmitc wrote:
| I can read an article and come away with a different
| sentiment and opinion without it being so called bad
| faith.
| jessehattabaugh wrote:
| I agree, no notes.
| darkerside wrote:
| Biological altruism refers to an individual giving up some of
| their reproductive fitness to help another individual
| reproduce.
|
| These altruistic acts are typically not done consciously, they
| have simple been formed by natural selection to act in this
| way.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm not sure if you can call it biological when the worker
| Bee has zero individual reproductive fitness.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| only if you implicitly think that "biological" means "there
| is a hard line between individual and collective life and
| one doesn't count for some reason".
| ineedasername wrote:
| _> I mean, we humans and nearly all other mammals certainly don't
| have a singular queen and a sterile caste of workers._
|
| Corporations can be seen as superorganisms of humans. I don't
| think I have to elaborate too much here for this to seem a
| minimally acceptable metaphor?
|
| There's even a queen replacement equivalent. In some
| circumstances a new new corporate queen will be prepared by the
| hive, but its also not uncommon for the (out of scope for this
| metaphor) mechanism of society to simply transplant one from
| elsewhere.
|
| "Sterile cast of workers" probably requires the least explanation
| of the metaphorical equivalents here.
|
| Governments as super organisms also seems an apt metaphor.
| kaashif wrote:
| > "Sterile cast of workers" probably requires the least
| explanation of the metaphorical equivalents here.
|
| I mean, I disagree. Can you explain? Human workers aren't
| sterile, even if fertility rates aren't all that high.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| I think he must mean in an economic or social capacity. An
| individual worker, alone, has essentially zero meaningful
| leverage compared to the CEO/queen. So sterility here means
| autonomy or agency or power.
| ineedasername wrote:
| They are sterile within the organization of a corporate
| superorganism. They cannot create more employees. The desire
| to obtain more employees for the superorganism is derived
| from a complex set of signals that propagates throughout the
| organization.
|
| Edit: Also unless employees are having sex and making the
| babies sort mail or fight off corporate raiders then the
| metaphorical aspects still hold.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Bees are cheap; evolution favors solutions that work, regardless
| of the cost to an individual.
| gscott wrote:
| Ok here is what ChatGPT thinks on this subject
|
| "Bees do not die after stinging. However, the stinger is left
| behind in the victim's skin and the bee will eventually die
| because it is attached to the bee's digestive tract and other
| internal organs. When a bee stings, it releases a chemical called
| pheromone that attracts other bees to attack. This is why it is
| important to remove the stinger as quickly as possible to prevent
| more stings.
|
| Bees are essential pollinators and play a vital role in
| maintaining the balance of ecosystems. They are important for the
| health of plants and the production of food. Therefore, it is
| important to respect bees and avoid disturbing them, as they are
| a valuable and vital part of the natural world."
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Why do bees die when they sting you?
|
| Because I come after them later with a can of RAID.
|
| </joke>
| rolph wrote:
| they dont die right away, it takes about a week.
|
| this also, those bees in the defense cohort are in the sunset of
| life, they will die of old age in 1 or 2 weeks.
|
| non-regal bees have a life span of ~5weeks in warm season, this
| allows a turnover of labour specialties tuned to the situation at
| hand.
|
| in winter bees change and live about 7months. i regularily
| overwinter my hives up here.
| bratbag wrote:
| I suspect its more an adaption to leave the stinger in and
| pumping poision even if the bee is killed and removed.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Worker bees are not important to the hive organism - there just
| need to be a sufficient number- afaik there is mass die-off
| during winter and a core remains to cluster together for the heat
| during the 3 months.
|
| Normally worker bees live 4-6 weeks, but the winter generation
| somehow is coded to live the entire 3 months.
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