When a young woman named He (何) took herself to a hospital complaining of a swollen eye, she expected to be treated for a simple infection.
Instead, the 29-year-old and her doctor were horrified to discover four bees living under her eyelids, feasting on her tears.
Doctors at Fooyin University Hospital in Pingtung County’s Donggang Township (東港) described the incident as a “world first,” having successfully managed to extract all four sweat bees alive from He’s tear duct.
Photo: copied by Hung Chen-hung, Taipei Times
“I saw something that looked like insect legs, so I pulled them out under a microscope slowly, and one at a time, without damaging their bodies,” Hung Chi-ting (洪啟庭), the hospital’s head of ophthalmology, told a news conference on Thursday last week.
He had been tending to a family member’s grave on March 30 and was pulling out weeds when she felt something go into her eye.
Presuming it was soil, she washed it out with water, but by night it had begun to swell up and she felt a sharp stinging pain under her eyelid.
At the hospital the next morning, Hung had suspected an infection, but when he looked at He’s eye through a microscope, he saw the tiny legs of the bees wriggling in her ducts, where they were feeding off the moisture and salt of her tears.
He’s eyesight, and the lives of the bees, were saved by the fact she had not rubbed her eyes.
“Thankfully she came to the hospital early, otherwise I might have had to take her eyeball out to save her life,” Hung said.
It took He three days to recover, Hung said
The small bees, known as Halictidae or “sweat bees”, are attracted to human perspiration and are found all over the world.
They are not usually aggressive and sting only if touched.
Hung told the news conference that sweat bees commonly nest in the mountains and near graves, which explained how He had come into contact with them.
He reminded the public that not to rub their eyes if they feel dust or something fly into them, but to rinse the eyes with water.
As for the bees, they are still alive.
“They’ve been sent as specimens to a professor at National Taiwan University and will be studied,” Hung said. “This is the first time in Taiwan we’ve seen something like this.”
Additional reporting by staff writer and agencies
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