How do bees defend and attack?

Bees primarily respond to attack by stinging. Each female bee is equipped with a single barbed stinger loaded with a venom sac containing apitoxin, a complex mix of proteins that cause local inflammation and acts as an anticoagulant. This stinger is a weapon to be wary of, but it is also lethal to the bee. Once the stinger lodges itself in a foe, the bee must disembowel herself to separate from it. This leaves the stinger and venom sac in place, where micro contractions allow it to continue administering venom, and allows the mortally wounded bee to continue flying at the intruder, as if for a second attack.

Bee stinger

Anatomy of a bee stinger (seperate from the bee). Notice the venom sac, containing apitoxin.

Apanim, borrowed without permission

Apanim, a component of apitoxin, blocks central nervous system (CNS) and smooth muscle Ca++ activated K+ channels, which are an important part of the machinery that makes us move and think. Interestingly, apanim has potential therapeutic uses, including ataxia, epilepsy, memory disorders.

apitoxin also contains:

Hyauronidases– helps toxin spread through the body
Histamine- a chemical that triggers an immune response in the victim
Dopamine/norepinephrine- neurotransmitters essential to proper signaling in the body

And other compounds such as adolapin, phopholipases,and non-specific protease inhibitors. Ouch! (Borrowed from Whistling in the dark)

So, is there any way to protect yourself from bees? Turns out, yes. The first step is not not disturb any hives- bees rarely attack when unprovoked. However, humans have been meddling with bees for a millenia, and have discovered that smoke makes bees slow and "sleepy". This realization made it easy for early humans to sedate a colony of bees and steal the honey. However, a scientific explanation for this phenomena has recently arisen. As we discussed in the Ontogeny section, bees use a chemical signal called iso-pentyl acetate, an "alarm pheremone", to let surrounding bees know that there is a threat. However, smoke appears to confuse this signal, preventing the cascade of alarmed bees and causing relative calm.


Generally, domesticated bees raised for honey production are very docile, rarely requiring any kind of sedation (such as smoke treatment), or even protective equipment on the part of the beekeeper. However, even such docile bees will rise to an attack. When a hive is disturbed, bees can attack individually, and en masse. While individual stings are rarely dangerous to larger animals, group attacks can lead to many stings, and can be lethal to a large predator. When other bees or insects such as yellowjackets attack the hive, the defensive response will vary depending on the size of the attacking group, and the variety of bee.