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I'm not sure why this answer is buried down so deep. It should be pretty obvious. The average bee has no reason to ever fight a mammal. Optimizing for a rare e

I'm not sure why this answer is buried down so deep. It should be pretty obvious. The average bee has no reason to ever fight a mammal. Optimizing for a rare event like that makes no sense. It's only once humans started domesticating honey bees that the interaction between honey bees and mammals has become a frequent occurrence. Surviving attacks against humans that help you survive is a really strange priority.

tsimionescu 2y ago
To be fair, many forest mammals will try to eat honey (bears and honey badgers being just two well known examples) and those have skins much thicker than even ours, so I suspect that bees have the same issues when stinging them. And those mammals are much more of a threat to a hive than insects and spiders, as they will virtually destroy the entire hive structure if they are not deterred, and likely kill thousands of larvae and bees.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> It's only once humans started domesticating honey bees that the interaction between honey bees and mammals has become a frequent occurrence. This can't possibly be true; the honeyguides are a family of birds whose evolved behavior is to find humans and lead them to wild beehives so that the humans can forage the honey (and the honeyguide can forage the leftovers).