Doctors in Taiwan treating a young woman with a swollen eye discovered four bees living beneath her eyelids, feasting upon her tears.
The 28-year-old woman – who’s been referred to as Ms He – had been weeding the grave of a family member during the annual Chinese Qingming tomb-sweeping festival, when she felt something enter her left eye.
Believing she’d just got some soil in her eye, Ms He tried to wash it out with water. However, by the end of the day she’d experienced swelling and a sharp, stinging pain.
The next morning, Ms He went to hospital believing she had an infection. However, she couldn’t have guessed what doctors would find underneath her eyelids…
After examining Ms He’s eye with a microscope, doctors were shocked when they extracted four sweat bees from her tear duct.
Sweat bees, also known as Halictidae, are reportedly attracted to sweat and also like to drink tears. In this case, they’d been dining out on the moisture and salt of Ms He’s tears.
Ophthalmology professor at the Fooyin University Hospital, Dr Hong Chi Ting, recalled the horrifying discovery while speaking to the BBC:
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,
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.
