To Sting or Not to Sting: A Poem by Madame Beespeaker

 To Sting or Not to Sting

Bombus queens and monarchs of the Apis melifera

 can sting you more than once.

Their daughters can defend themselves,

Alas, not so the sons.

A Honeybee uses her stinger to protect the hive,

if she stilletos another insect she may remain alive.

She'd rather not attack a mammal for fear of her mortality,

But African bees will sting en masse with a mob mentality.

Princess bees and the queen will fight each other to the death,

But the elder queen would rather swarm to avoid regicidal stress.

All male bees are amorous and really quite defenseless.

Bald faced hornets will not hurt us if we keep our distance.

The same can be said of mostly all the female Vespas,

But giant Japanese hornets are Hymenoptera horribilus.

They make all other wasps and bees seem but an inconvenience.

 

Madame Beespeaker, Oct. 30, In the Year of Our Bee 2013