The Science Of Stings

What makes a slight skin prick, administered by a small flying insect, turn into a life-threatening emergency?

- Richard Jones

Every entomologist will have been asked: “What is the point of wasps?” But, really, the key biological question is: “What is the point of stings?” That is, why is it that some stings seem more acceptable to us than others? And why is it that some stings really, really hurt?

Wasps sting, but because wasps are, shall we say, ‘under-appreciated’, the sting in the tail has grown in the telling. Wasps are small insects, yet are exaggerated into monsters of phantasmagorical proportions. However, this is a fear based in ignorance. In reality, there are no such things as monsters.

Bees sting too but engender far less fear. Bumblebees are just too cuddly for words anyway, while honeybees are lauded for their earnest and diligent industry, and the production of that quasi-magical stuff called honey. Until recently, bees were also held up as a shining natural example of a social structure where food and shelter, community and safety were seen as the just rewards for a proletariat worker class overseen by a ruling aristocratic elite. Wasps, on the other hand, have been derided since the time of the Greek writer Plutarch, who suggested they were degenerate bees, unable or unwilling to keep up with the morally virtuous hive work ethic.

Wasps have a serious public relations problem. It’s only by considering why they (and bees) have evolved such formidable stings that we can begin to truly understand their nature, how they fit into the natural world, and why they need not be demonised.