Luke O'Neill

speaker

4,397 appearances 23 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 6d ago

Luke O'Neill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 23 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.

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Show Me the Science with Luke O'Neill · The Science of Stings · 10 Sep 2026 podcast

Now, let's have a look at bees.

Now, bees can also sting us.

And a bee sting can be much worse than a wasp sting.

And the stuff in the bee venom, there's more of it than there is in the wasp.

So the bee seems to have a more powerful venom.

And first of all, it's got a stinger that makes a big difference to wasps.

it sticks into your skin, a little spike.

Now here's remarkable evolution because that stinger will pump the toxins into your skin.

So it's about like it has its own needle and it sticks the needle into your skin and pumps this stuff in.

And then the bee will fly off and leave that stinger in and it pumps all the stuff, the little sort of bag, I suppose, on the top of the stinger, top of the syringe and ends up in your skin.

So the first thing you do is get the stinger out.

And even though it's a bit sore, you know, get it out.

You can use a tweezer or whatever because if you don't get it out, it'll keep pumping the stuff into your skin.

Now, what's in the venom of the bee?

Well, it's got phospholipase A2, just like the wasp.

And of course, evolution is clever there.

It's using the same kind of thing in different venoms to cause the prostaglandins and leukotrienes that cause all the swelling and the redness and the pain comes in.

So phospholipase A2 is just like in the wasp sting.

It's got its own thing, though, a thing called melatonin.

And that's like the mastoporin that occurs in the wasp.

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