Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i was wondering if anyone has heard of feeding chameleons bees with their stingers removed??i could have sworn that i have read it in a book somewhere but could be mistaken.we have the regular yellow jackets but also,and im sure he would love them,are the huge,giant,black and yellow honey bees you see buzzing around flowers.i guess they are safe once the stinger is removed,but i was wondering if they might be avoided because the chameleon assumes the stinger is still effective.if youre wondering how the stinger is removed,its easy.the way i do it,when i fed them to other animals,is to catch a whole bunch of them with a net.place them all in a jar with a screw on lid.place the jar in the fridge or freezer.dont leave them in there too long,just keep opening up the fridge every few minutes untill you see them all laying on the bottom not moving.then you can pour them on the table and start pulling out the stingers with tweezers.if cooled down enough,they should stay inactive for about 5 min.after the stinger is removed you can place them back in the jar untill being fed.they should come back to life and be very active as long as you didnt freeze them too much.they must be fed right away because once the stinger is removed,they usually die within a couple hours.

Hi, lots of my Chameleons used to eat bees. I used to catch lots of bees and remove their stingers before hand feeding them to my Chams. We moved to a new location and we don't have many bees here, so they don't get them here. In my old place I used to take my Chams outside, just loose in some fruit trees we had. The bees would come around and my chams would eat them with the stinger intact. Never had any problems. One of my Quads once ate a huge bumblebee. A young Veiled female used to eat lots of sweat bees. Again no problems.