Doctors find bees in woman’s eye, feeding on her tears

A Taiwanese woman being treated for an eye infection found out she actually had four bees living under her eyelid and feeding on her tear ducts, local reports said.

The 29-year-old woman, identified only by her last name He, went to Fooyin University Hospital in Taiwan with severe eye pain, local outlet CTS reported last week.

Doctors ended up pulling out the insects from under her swollen eyelids in what they described as a “world’s first,” according to The Straits 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,” Dr. Hung Chi-ting said at a press conference, according to Business Insider Singapore.

The doctors suggested that He may have come into contact with the sweat bees when she was pulling out weeds near a relative’s grave. At the time, she believed she’d gotten dirt in her eye and tried to wash it out, but then began experiencing a stinging pain.

The insects, identified as sweat bees, don’t usually attack people but are attracted to human perspiration. They mostly nest near graves and in fallen trees.