When I was young, I was under the impression I was allergic to bee stings. Turns out I was just allergic to the thought of being stung, which I’m sure is an affliction most of us suffer from. Let me just say, seeing this sort-of gross picture of a bee mid-sting, has not made the idea any more romantic.
According to photographer Kathy Keatley Garvey — who needed just four shots to capture this image — it’s the first time such an act has been caught on camera… as far as she is aware. Apparently Garvey has “taken at least 1 million photos of honeybees in her lifetime” — which sounds like a bit of an exaggeration — yet never snapped an image quite like this one.
That stringy, caramel-looking trail coming from the bee is “abdominal tissue”. Seeing a sting like this, frozen in time, somehow makes me feel sorry for the poor bee, which probably went a died a lonely death somewhere in a tree.
[The Sacramento Bee, via Geekologie]
Image: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Yes...who'd be a Bee? The one time you get to use your prick...you die!
I laughed more than I should have :)
Even funnier if you know they are female :)
The poor person that got stung for this picture.
The story behind the sting. http://ucanr.org/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=7735
No bee's were harmed in the making of this :)
No wonder they die. It looks like an unravelling piece of tape.