The love of knowledge in matters of natural history is not without its cruelties.  To make absolutely certain of the point attained by the sting, and to inform myself completely concerning this horrible talent for murder, I have provoked I dare not confess how many assassinations in captivity.  Without a single exception, the bee has always been stung in the throat.  In the preparations for the final blow the extremity of the abdomen may of course touch here and there, at different points of the thorax or abdomen, but it never remains there, nor is the sting unsheathed, as may easily be seen.  Once the struggle has commenced the Philanthus is so absorbed in her operations that I can remove the glass cover and follow every detail of the drama with my magnifying-glass.

The invariable situation of the wound being proved, I bend back the head of the bee, so as to open the articulation.  I see under what we may call the chin of the bee a white spot, hardly a twenty-fifth of an inch square, where the horny integuments are lacking, and the fine skin is exposed uncovered.  It is there, always there, in that tiny defect in the bee’s armour, that the sting is inserted.  Why is this point attacked rather than another?  Is it the only point that is vulnerable?  Stretch open the articulation of the corselet to the rear of the first pair of legs.  There you will see an area of defenceless skin, fully as delicate as that of the throat, but much more extensive.  The horny armour of the bee has no larger breach.  If the Philanthus were guided solely by considerations of vulnerability she would certainly strike there, instead of insistently seeking the narrow breach in the throat.  The sting would not grope or hesitate, it would find its mark at the first attempt.  No; the poisoned thrust is not conditioned by mechanical considerations; the murderer disdains the wide breach in the corselet and prefers the lesser one beneath the chin, for purely logical reasons which we will now attempt to elicit.

The moment the bee is stung I release it from the aggressor.  I am struck in the first place by the sudden inertia of the antennae and the various members of the mouth; organs which continue to move for so long a time in the victims of most predatory creatures.  I see none of the indications with which my previous studies of paralysed victims have made me familiar:  the antennae slowly waving, the mandibles opening and closing, the palpae trembling for days, for weeks, even for months.  The thighs tremble for a minute or two at most; and the struggle is over.  Henceforth there is complete immobility.  The significance of this sudden inertia is forced upon me:  the Philanthus has stabbed the cervical ganglions.  Hence the sudden immobility of all the organs of the head:  hence the real, not the apparent death of the bee.  The Philanthus does not paralyse merely, but kills.