Doctors find 4 bees living in woman's eye

The 29 year old Taiwanese woman expected to be treated for a simple infection, after she sought medical help for swelling around her eye.

The tiny sweat bees had been surviving on her tear ducts, according to Taiwanese news channel CTS News. Hung said that sweat bees commonly live in the mountains or near graves, which explained how they flew into the woman's eye. However, it later began to swell up and she felt a sharp stinging pain underneath her eyelid.

"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 said, according to Business Insider Singapore. She went to Fooyin University Hospital, and doctors there revealed to her that she has four living bees inside her eye feeding on her tears.

They have also been discovered to consume tears due to their high protein content, according to research by the Kansas Entomological Society.

However, sweat bees are attracted to perspiration and have a tendency to land on humans to obtain moisture and salts from their sweat, the department said.

Her eyesight was saved but she suffered cellulitis (a bacterial skin infection) and keratitis (inflammation of the cornea).

Sweat bees range from less than one-fourth of an inch to three-fourths of an inch in length and are considered nonaggressive bees, according to BeeInformed.org. While they are not known to be aggressive bees, it's likely they would sting if touched or aggravated - for example if He had rubbed her eyes.

Also known as Halictidae, sweat bees are so named because they typically consume human sweat. "If she did she could have induced the bees to produce venom ... she could have gone blind".

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