Western honey bee Since workers are not fully sexually developed, they do not mate with drones and thus can only produce haploid (male) offspring. Queens and workers have a modified ovipositor, a stinger, with which they defend the hive. Unlike bees of any other genus and the queens of their own species, the stinger of worker honey bees is barbed. Contrary to popular belief, a bee does not always die soon after stinging; this misconception is based on the fact that a bee will usually die after stinging a human or other mammal. The stinger and its venom sac, with musculature and a
Western honey bee at best partial. Oldroyd observes that the lack of full domestication is somewhat surprising, given that people have kept bees for at least 7000 years. Instead, bee-keepers have found ways to manage bees using hives, while the bees remain "largely unchanged from their wild cousins". Leslie Bailey and B. V. Ball, in their book "Honey Bee Pathology", call honey bees "feral insects", in contrast to the silkworm ("Bombyx mori") which they call "the only insect that has been domesticated", and refer to the "popular belief among many biologists as well as beekeepers that bees are domesticated". They argue that honey