Incredibly Creepy Video Shows You a Bee Stinger Like You've Never Seen It Before

The sharp stab of a bee sting hurts bad enough, but it's the venom that makes the pain last.

The stingers of honeybees (Apis mellifera) are typically single-use. In the process of stabbing their target's skin, the bee's stinger is ripped from its rear, leaving a considerable wound that the bee later dies from.

But even after the doomed bee has flown away, the stinger keeps on pumping.

As part of a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have captured a disembodied stinger in action to better understand how they work.

It's a little disturbing, but also we can't look away. See for yourself in the video below.

"If you've ever been stung by a bee, you'll know it's a very painful process, but now we've been able to identify all the working parts packed into the tiny stinger," says entomologist Fiorella Ramirez-Esquivel of Macquarie University in Australia.

"We've known since as early as 1910 that the venom sac of a honeybee stinger empties into a chamber with little pumping elements called valves, but until now we didn't know exactly how they work."

High-speed cameras captured the semi-translucent stinger as it plunges into a clear gel designed to mimic human skin, revealing the inner workings of this remarkable piece of biological machinery.

"Despite sustained interest in the hymenopteran stinger, to date no direct observations of the venom pumping exist and our understanding of the biomechanics of venom delivery remains limited," the team writes.

"The stinger of the honey bee has unique properties including being reasonably large, translucent, and being able to autotomize [disconnect from the bee's body] during stinging."

It's surprising nobody has done this already, because there's some really wild stuff going on inside.

Ramirez-Esquivel and team describe the stinger mechanism as a "unique double-piston micro-pump."

They used forceps to guide the stinger into place, but then a pair of sharp barbs called lancets take over, with alternating jabs that drive the barb further into the 'skin' while also pumping venom.

Each lancet is attached to a corresponding valve inside the bulb chamber – that's the thicker part at the base of the stinger. These flexible valves alternately inflate to drive their attached lancet down, and deflate to retract it, squeezing past each other as they alternate.

This also creates a downward pumping pressure on the connected venom chamber, drawing the liquid down towards the 'skin'.

"Finally, and perhaps most dramatically, as the valves meet in the middle of the stroke, they change shape again to push past each other," says Ramirez-Esquivel.

"This is a remarkable strategy to pump fluid since maintaining a seal is vital to effectively transmit pressure. The unique geometry of the valves is the key; they act as collapsible pistons and – by pumping in opposite directions – they're able to deliver a continuous flow of venom."

As far as we know, this autonomous pumping 'design' is unique to worker honey bees. It's never been seen before; other members of the order Hymenoptera achieve their stings with wave-like contractions around the venom tract, a bit like how our gut pumps food through our body.

The honeybee sting, on the other hand, is more similar to many human-made devices, like the syringes we use to inject drugs. Even these have only one relatively rigid piston in the chamber, which means they can't refill without creating backflow. Perhaps the bee stinger could inspire a device that can, for medical or research purposes.

"The double piston design adds complexity but it's the key to the stinger being able to deliver venom continuously in a compact, autonomous unit," says Ramirez-Esquivel.

The research has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.