Let's not overlook that evolution is an economic process. There's an opportunity cost to every mutation. There may be an evolutionary path that will lead to non

Let's not overlook that evolution is an economic process. There's an opportunity cost to every mutation. There may be an evolutionary path that will lead to non-sacrificial bee stingers, but to change that would be immediately detrimental to the species and so it is never pursued. Or at best, provides no immediate benefit which would allow the mutants to out-compete other bees. Natural selection isn't goal-oriented and can't look to the future to measure a potential benefit. It's essentially throwing everything at the wall and see what sticks deployed at scale. The bees have found a local optimum that happens to tolerate bees dying when they sting and there's no pressure for that to change. If the economic formula ever changed where dying put them at a disadvantage, then the evolution engine would kick into high gear.