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