> Honey bees are known to leave their stingers embedded in tender flesh once they sting you and fly away
This is an accident of our physiology as honey bees sting other species multiple times, just like a wasp can to us. They don’t except to rip in half or end their life when they sting us. This is not an adaptation specifically ensuring group survival, it is a tragedy exclusive to encountering mammals near the hive.
But their stingers are barbed, unlike wasp stingers and other stinger types which are smooth. Barbed stingers seem specifically designed to lodge in elastic skin (that is, skin of a larger vertebrate, not simply mammals) and a barbed stinger can also be more effective at delivering venom, pumping long after the bee itself has disengaged and slunk away.
I don't see how you can call it an "accident" if it's a simple fact that barbed stingers are well-adapted to lodge in the skin of larger victims and stick around and increase efficacy of the attack.
Worker bees themselves are disposable. If we consider an entire hive as the organism, rather than the component bees, we can easily see how the loss of several workers to loss-of-stinger attacks is beneficial to the entire organism, and it really does enhanced survival of the group, or the organism itself, if you will.
> we can easily see how the loss of several workers to loss-of-stinger attacks is beneficial to the entire organism
We can't easily see it, especially if on the other hand you have a design that requires no losses. And it's not always "several", especially with bigger predators
But we know that drones have reasonably short lives and are sacrificed in other situations (to save food), die immediately after mating with a queen. A reasonable person might assume that a drone bee has served it's purpose if it is designed this way with a common predator.
I don't think it disproves "honeybee barbs are adaptive against mammals", for example:
1. It may not be adaptive for honeybees to self-sacrifice against smaller targets. The full venom dose could be overkill, or it may be better to have multiple tries or engage multiple foes.
2. Perhaps it's just harder to evolve a good barb against smaller targets or ones with different surfaces/material.
3. Would smaller/different barbs increase the risk of "accidents"?
Let's also consider that honey-bee queens don't have barbs, which suggests there's some sort of evolutionary pressure rather than it just being a quirk of anatomy.
This is an accident of our physiology as honey bees sting other species multiple times, just like a wasp can to us. They don’t except to rip in half or end their life when they sting us. This is not an adaptation specifically ensuring group survival, it is a tragedy exclusive to encountering mammals near the hive.
I don't see how you can call it an "accident" if it's a simple fact that barbed stingers are well-adapted to lodge in the skin of larger victims and stick around and increase efficacy of the attack.
Worker bees themselves are disposable. If we consider an entire hive as the organism, rather than the component bees, we can easily see how the loss of several workers to loss-of-stinger attacks is beneficial to the entire organism, and it really does enhanced survival of the group, or the organism itself, if you will.
We can't easily see it, especially if on the other hand you have a design that requires no losses. And it's not always "several", especially with bigger predators
the disposable worker is not disposed and continues working
I don't think it disproves "honeybee barbs are adaptive against mammals", for example:
1. It may not be adaptive for honeybees to self-sacrifice against smaller targets. The full venom dose could be overkill, or it may be better to have multiple tries or engage multiple foes.
2. Perhaps it's just harder to evolve a good barb against smaller targets or ones with different surfaces/material.
3. Would smaller/different barbs increase the risk of "accidents"?
Let's also consider that honey-bee queens don't have barbs, which suggests there's some sort of evolutionary pressure rather than it just being a quirk of anatomy.