Do bumble bees sting?

Female ones do.

Taken from BumbleBees.Org

Can a bumblebee sting or bite?
Actually it can do both, but it mandibles (jaws) are not strong enough to cause any pain to a human, and are used mainly for moulding the wax for the cocoons, honeypots and pollen stores. Also the mandibles are rounded, so have next to no piercing ability. Some species, mainly Bombus lucorum, do use their mandibles for nectar robbing, but it takes them ages to pierce through a flower to steal the nectar, so human skin is in no danger. This is also why a bumblebee nest in the house will cause no damage as they cannot drill or dig. Workers (females) and queens can sting, and they have an unbarbed sting , so could sting repeatedly,unlike honey bees, but rarely do. The only time I have heard of bumblebees stinging is when they have been roughly handled, or their nest or the entrance to the nest is being tampered with. I have never been stung, and I have handled hundreds, measuring tongue lengths, head widths etc. I can honestly say they are the most accommodating insects to work with – hence my deep fondness for them.

bumble bees as in honey bees? The fuzzy ones that are pollinators? Yes.

The female haploid generation (the workers) can sting. However, it’s not good for them. When they sting you, their stinger comes off their backend and pulls out the abdomen contents and the bee dies.

I would say don’t bother them and you should be fine. They aren’t as bad as wasps. They really won’t sting unless they REALLY need to.

@ParaParaYukiko

Wow, that’s interesting…>< I was taught that female workers could only sting once and then they were dead…I am going to go look this up some more.

@seekingwolf I didn’t know this stuff either! This site I used as a source seems to be pretty much a personal website with a lot of information but not many sources for what the author claims, but it’s still interesting reading material.

Other info on bee stings, taken from the same site:

Male bumblebees cannot sting as they do not have a sting. In males the part of the body that becomes the sting in females becomes the genital capsule in males, so is used in mating.

The reason a honey bee dies after she has stung a human is that the barbs in her sting and our relatively elastic skin prevent her pulling the sting out. Eventually she will either be swatted to death by whomever she has stung, or she will pull so much that the sting, poison sac and part of her abdominal contents will be pulled out of her body and left hanging and she will fly off to die. If the sting and poison sac are left behind hanging out of your skin the muscles will probably still be attached to the poison sac and will still pump poison for a while, so you should pull the sting out. Some say it is best to pull, other say you should use a downwards brushing motion.

It is believed that the sting evolved to be used against other insects who do not have elastic skin, so the sting could easily be pulled out. It is only relatively recently that mammals have become bee predators, so the honey bee sting will evolve to have smaller, then no barbs. However this does not explain the smooth bumblebee sting, and bumblebees are usually thought as less “advanced” than honey bees. Also it is not the survival of the individual worker that is important in a hive or nest, but the survival of the new queens and males, as only they will go on to breed.

♫ I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee.

@ParaParaYukiko

Oh, that is interesting. The diploid males (drones), well, I know those don’t sting. They may mate with the queen. Looks like I was right (according to this) that females will die after stinging. Ouch.

The only reason I know this stuff right now is I was learning about parthenogenesis for a test and bees are excellent examples of that: unfertilized eggs = females, fertilized eggs = males. It’s kinda cool.

They mostly just drop things all the time and are awkward.

@seekingwolf, Slight correction. Fertilized eggs become females and unfertilized eggs become males. I never knew this. I was motivated to check into it from your post, but it occurred to me that if it worked the way you said, then there would be no need for males.

Oye I’m sorry >< Thank you for correcting me there :D