Poison mechanism of worker bee, greatly enlarged.
1. Poison sack or reservoir. 2. Muscles which force sting into flesh and pump poison from sack. These muscles continue operating for as long as 20 minutes after the sting has been torn from the bee’s body. 3. Sheath within which shafts of sting slide. 4. Barbed tip of sting. These barbs hold the sting in the flesh of the victim so securely as to tear the sting from the body of the bee.
How a bee stings
The poison-injecting mechanism of the worker bee is located within the extremity of the abdomen and consists of a barbed sting at the base of which is attached a sack, or reservoir, containing the poison. Male bees (drones) have no sting, and the queen reserves hers for possible use in battle with a rival queen.
In the act of stinging, the bee forces the tip of the sting through the skin of the victim, where it becomes imbedded, being held by the barbs. In escaping the bee tears away, leaving the sting, poison sack, and attached muscles and viscera. Incidentally, this rupture results in the death of the bee.
Capillarity and the spasmodic movement of the attached muscles force the poison from the sack through the hollow shaft of the sting into the wound.
Treatment of bee sting
To counteract this, the first thing that anyone should do when stung by a honeybee is to SCRAPE out the sting. This may be done with a knife blade or even with the fingernail, although the latter is far from sanitary. NEVER PULL OUT THE STING, because in grasping the protruding poison sack between the thumb and forefinger, the sack is certain to be pinched and the poison squeezed into the wound.
Since, under normal conditions, it takes several seconds for the contents of the sack to work into the puncture, prompt removal of the sting with the attached sack prevents much of the poison from being injected.