Bee sting

A bee sting is the wound and pain caused when a female bee punctures skin with its stinger, injecting a venom whose chemical composition differs from that of other stinging or biting insects. Only female bees carry a stinger, since it is a modified egg-laying organ, and male drones have none. Most stings cause only brief pain, itching and swelling, but some people develop an allergic reaction to venom components that can become life-threatening without prompt treatment with antihistamines or epinephrine. In honey bees the stinger is barbed, so once it lodges in the skin of a mammal the bee cannot withdraw it without fatal damage to its own abdomen, and it dies after stinging.