Beestings

Honey bees can sting!  The sting mechanism is an adapted egg-laying tube or ovipositor, and in emergencies worker bees sometimes do lay eggs with it. The queen is usually reluctant to sting, although she could, because her ovipositor is so very important to the whole colony for laying those many thousands of eggs.

When the bee stings you, the very fine point is pushed into you by the bee getting a grip with its legs and bending round to get direct force on the sting, but as soon as the double point is in the skin, little muscles start to work a sawing, ratchet-like movement  and the two halves of the barbed sting work their way deeper, whilst other muscles squeeze the bag of venom repeatedly.

The venom is a complicated mixture of chemicals, including some that cause pain and some that make blood vessels swell and leak lymph, so that a stung area usually swells up and itches for a couple of days. The venom kills a few cells in the area close to the sting and this can leave a little scar for a while.

It’s a very bad idea to get stung inside your mouth or throat because the swelling, besides being horribly painful, can block your breathing. Worst pain of all must be the recent example of a beekeeper who had a bee crawl far up his nose and then sting him. He described the pain as far worse than giving birth!

When bees sting each other or other insects in the defence of their nest, they can usually pull the sting free and use it again. Insects have a thin outer crust that acts as a skeleton and bees tend to sting through the thin areas at the joints. When they sting bigger animals, however the skin is elastic and rubbery, so the barbs get trapped. The bee pulls but only pulls itself free by leaving the sting apparatus behind in the victim. So the bee flies away and probably dies next day, having defended its family and had a bit of its tail end ripped out.  The sting goes on pumping after the bee has left!

What to do

The standard advice if you are stung is, first, to get the sting out as soon as you can, and second, to hide the stung area from other bees.  This is because the sting gives out a scent which makes other worker bees come and add their own stings. Leaving the sting in and letting its scent surround you is asking for more trouble.  Beekeepers usually scratch stings away with a finger nail and then apply some of their smoke to the area to disguise the smell of the sting.

The only effective treatment for a sting is to apply an anti-histamine, either a spray on, or a pill.  All the old wives cures such as applying acid vinegar or alkali washing soda are non-starters. they may have a calming effect because attention is being paid, but they do not directly affect the sting. Even so, a sting is going to hurt and will probably last a couple of days at least, so try to avoid it happening!

You can become used to bee stings. After being stung regularly for a year or two most beekeepers are almost immune to the poisons and although it hurts when the sting goes in – like being stabbed with a hot needle – there is very little pain or swelling and the effects wear off rapidly.  However, this is not always the case and some people become more and more sensitive to stings until a sting can be life-threatening, with heart beat stopping and severe anaphylactic shock that needs immediate medical attention. Sufferers often carry an “epipen” for emergencies, which is used to give a shot of adrenaline to keep the heart beating.

One friend who dropped a swarm on himself and received many stings at once went from immune to hyper-sensitive in one day and had to give up beekeeping immediately.

There is a greater likelihood of hyper-sensitivity in members of beekeepers’ families than in the general population. This must partly be due to greater risk of getting stung because bees are accidentally brought into the house or live in the garden, but another suggestion is that beekeepers collect tiny amounts of venom on their clothing. This dries and is spread as dust when they get home. So all the members of the family are exposed to very small but frequent doses of venom.

There are treatments for people who are very sensitive, consisting of regular exposure to tiny amounts of venom. The aim is to get the body to produce its own anti-toxins so that defence is in position before the person is stung. It's a long and sometimes painful treatment and does not always work, so the advice is still to avoid getting stung.

Do other bees sting?

Yes, but not all of them. The bumble bees can sting, although it does not hurt as much as honey bees in my experience.  It can be quite hard to annoy a bumble bee enough that it stings. After all, each bumble represents about 1/50 of the colony and if lost will be significant, whereas a honey bee may be as little as 1/100,000 of the colony and hardly missed.   Stinging would be even more of a sacrifice to a solitary bee and would mean all its young dying too, so it’s rare for a solitary bee to sting. To some extent they are relying on resemblance to dangerous honey bees as a defence so that they do not have to defend themselves.