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Bees – Lectures by Rudolf Steiner - Stinging is not a pleasant experience for a bee
Identifier
020908
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Bees – Lectures by Rudolf Steiner
November 26th 1923
You know that sometimes meeting up with a bee can turn into an unpleasant experience. It can sting you. Being as large as a human being means that you will usually suffer only an inflammation on your skin-but unpleasant it remains. Little animals can die from the sting. All this derives from the fact that the bee has a stinger that is actually a duct. In this duct something resembling a piston goes up and down, retrieving from the poison sac the poison it causes to stream downward.
This poison, which causes such unpleasant problems for anyone who encounters it, is extraordinarily important for bees. It is not even a pleasant experience for a bee to have to sacrifice the poison while engaged in stinging.