Article: Bee sting

For other uses, see Bee sting (disambiguation).

A bee

A bee sting in the vernacular means a sting of a bee, wasp, hornet, yellowjacket or sawfly. Some people may even call the bite of a horsefly a bee sting. It is important to differentiate a bee sting from an insect bite. It is also important to recognize that the venom or toxin of stinging insects is quite different. Therefore, the body's reaction to a bee sting may differ significantly from one species to another.

The most aggressive stinging insects are wasps and hornets.

In people who are allergic to bee stings, they can trigger a dangerous anaphylactic reaction that is potentially deadly.

Honeybee stings

A honeybee that is away from the hive foraging for nectar or pollen will rarely sting, except when stepped on or roughly handled. Honeybees will actively seek out and sting when they perceive the hive to be threatened, often being alerted to this by the release of attack pheromones (below).

Although it is widely believed that a worker honeybee can sting only once, this is a misconception: although the stinger is in fact barbed so that it lodges in the victim's skin, tearing loose from the bee's abdomen and leading to her death in minutes, this only happens if the victim is a mammal. The bee's stinger evolved originally for inter-bee combat between members of different hives, and the barbs evolved later as an anti-mammal defense: a barbed stinger can still penetrate the chitinous plates of another bee's exoskeleton and retract safely. Note that, as honeybees are the only Hymenoptera with a barbed stinger, they are the only stinging insects that cannot sting a human repeatedly.

The stinger's injection of apitoxin into the victim is accompanied by the release of alarm pheromones, a process which is only accelerated if the bee is fatally injured. Release of alarm pheromones near a hive or swarm may attract other bees to the location, where they will likewise exhibit defensive behaviors until there is no longer a threat (typically because the victim has either fled or been killed). These pheromones do not dissipate nor wash off quickly, and for this reason it is not advisable to enter water to avoid being stung, once an attack has begun; the bees will wait and resume attacking as soon as the target leaves the water. What is far more important is to get as far as possible from the hive as quickly as possible, because additional bees cannot then join the attacking group.

(Alarm pheromones have been characterized as having a "dirty socks" smell, which is why amateur beekeepers will often bathe and change into clean clothes before working a hive.)

The larger drone bees do not have stingers, since they are males and the stinger is a modified ovipositor. The queen bee has a smooth stinger and can, if need be, sting skin-bearing creatures multiple times, but the queen does not leave the hive under normal conditions. Her stinger is not for defense of the hive; she only uses it for dispatching rival queens, ideally before they can finish pupating. Queen breeders who handle multiple queens and have the queen odor on their hands are sometimes stung by a queen.

Treatment

The first step in treatment is removal of the barbed stinger if stung by a honeybee. The stinger should be scraped out with an implement such as a credit card or a knife to avoid squeezing more venom into the body. Once the sting is removed, the victim must be treated for anaphylactic shock if allergic to bee stings. If the victim is not allergic, reduce pain and swelling with a cold compress. Swelling and itching may persist for a week. Do not scratch the area as that will only increase the itching and swelling. If a reaction persists for over a week or covers an area greater than 3 or 4 inches, seek medical attention.

See also

• Bee venom therapy
• Apitoxin
• Stinger (organ)
• Hornet stings
• Characteristics of common wasps and bees