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Bees

Four bees lived inside a woman's eye and fed off her tears, reports say

Josh Hafner
USA TODAY

A young woman in Taiwan reportedly had four bees living beneath her eyelid and "feasting on her tears."

That's according to the Guardian, which cited a press conference where a doctor at Taiwan's Fooyin University Hospital described how he found the insects squirming within the woman's eye. 

"I saw something that looked like insect legs, so I pulled them out under a microscope slowly, and one at a time without damaging things inside," said Hung Chi-ting, the hospital's head of ophthalmology, at the conference, per CNN.

The four insects measured less than a quarter of an inch in length, the network reported, and are known as "sweat bees" or Halictidae. The insects, which are typically non-aggressive, are drawn to human perspiration that "offers them precious moisture and salts," the Missouri Department of Conservation notes.

Taiwan's CTS News reported that the woman, identified by her last name, He, said she felt a pain in her eye one day while tending the grave of a relative, according to reports. She was pulling weeds at the time and presumed it was soil, but a stinging sensation under her eyelid continued even after she washed it out with water.

When she visited the doctor, Hung peered into her eye through a microscope expecting to find an infection. Instead he saw the tiny legs of the bees wriggling in her ducts, the Guardian reported.

What saved the woman, her doctor said: She refrained from rubbing her eyes, which could have ruptured the bees and caused an infection.

"Thankfully she came to the hospital early, otherwise I might have had to take her eyeball out to save her life," Hung said, according to CNN.

CTS News broadcast the press conference in a report published last week:

 

 

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