I just learned about solitary bees a few years ago. For some reason it has never cross my mind until I was researching these unusual blue bees in my garden which turned out to bee Blue Banded Bee which is awesome:
https://www.fotocommunity.com/photo/blue-banded-bee-flight-karthikphotography/27046849
You are right if it’s a honey bee. There are many other species of bees that do have males with stingers. For example many solitary bees (live alone rather than in a hive) have stingers though aren’t known to sting people unless swallowed like in the OP.
The British isles have over 200 species of solitary bees so it’s very possible the bee hero in question here was a male :)
Could have been a male bee too
thanks for sharing these cool wasps! We have some very interesting ones here in Thailand as well and I’ve seen them dig trenches just tossing sand around half a meter up which just shows how crazy strong they actually are so incredibly don’t doubt those stings sting