Taiwan Doctor Removes Four Sweat Bees Living in Woman’s Eye
OutdoorHub Reporters 04.10.19
A Taiwanese doctor removed four small sweat bees living inside a woman’s eye lid, and they were all still alive..
The woman, who was reportedly identified as Ms. He, was apparently doing some work outside when the minuscule insects flew into her eyes. The bugs caused agony in He’s eye for hours until she finally received medical attention at a hospital in southern Taiwan.
‘They Were All Alive’
“She couldn’t completely close her eyes. I looked into the gap with a microscope and saw something black that looked like an insect leg,” Dr. Hong, an ophthalmology professor at the hospital stated at a news conference. “I grabbed the leg and very slowly took one out, then I saw another one, and another and another. They were still intact and all alive.”
Sweat bees – also referred to as Halictidae – are around 3 to 4 millimeters in length. They can be brightly colored, metallic, or dark and their markings can vary from green to red to yellow, often with bands resembling those of honeybees. According to the Missouri Department of Conservation, “one of the most noticeable traits of sweat bees is their attraction to a human’s perspiration,” which offers them moisture and is loaded with minerals.
Pictures of the sweat bees were shown on Taiwanese TV:
Ms. He has since been discharged and is expected to make a full recovery.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, we recently reported the rediscovery of the world’s largest bee – the Wallace’s giant bee.
The bee was named after Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer alongside Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution through natural selection. Wallace, an English entomologist, discovered the giant bee exploring the Indonesian island of Bacan. He described the female bee, which is about the length a human thumb, as “a large black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag-beetle”.
