What provokes a bee to sting?
A. Worker bees sting as a defensive mechanism to protect their colony. A worker bee dies after one sting. In my experience, worker bees sting only as a last resort. While maintaining bee colonies, I find workers using their mandible or jaws to bite at the hair on my arms. Of course, if I upset them too much, they will sting. Queen bees sting to kill their competition in the colony. When a colony of bees finds itself with no queen, the workers will begin to raise new queens. These young queens emerge about the same time and then fight each other until only one remains. They use their stinger to kill other queens. Since the stinger is a modified ovipostor or egg laying device, Drones, or male honey bees do not have stingers and thus do not sting.
