Well, it’s not my first sting ever, but it’s my first since I got bees. And, get this, after all the stupid, incompetent bee wrangling I’ve done– collecting the swarm, splitting the colony, generally being a huge klutz– she stung me as I was bringing out the dinner scraps for the chickens.
On the way back in, I stopped by Washington just to see how it was doing (we had CRAZY rain today, and I added a little corrugated roof cover)… I noticed that there were a couple of flies on the hive, and for absolutely no good reason at all, decided to step over and flick them off. As I was standing there, one of the girls came out and flew around my leg. I think she got caught between my shorts and my leg and HEY! OW!
Flicked the little stinger off (scrape, not pull!) and thus far have not collapsed into anaphylactic shock. To be honest, I barely got a bump– about what you’d get from a mosquito but with a definite pain enhancement factor. It burns.
So, FYI, yes, if you have bees around, sooner or later, you are going to make them sting you. And, what’s more, you’re probably not going to die.
How about this… according to some list I found that apparently originates with US National Safety Council, your lifetime chances of dying from a bee sting are something like 1 in 57,000, which is just a bit less than your chances of dying from “hot weather”… Oddly enough, that’s only slightly more likely than dying from “legal execution” at 1 in 62,000.
Really? I have a one in 62,000 chance of being executed?
Holy crap.
I just got stung by a bumblebee this afternoon. Good gracious, it hurt a LOT! I think my last bee sting was when I was 5, so it’s been a while. After two miserable hours, the pain has mostly stopped now, although the finger in question is pretty dang swollen. But I didn’t die, I’ll grant you that.
The even better news is that after you’ve had a hundred or so stings, you barely feel them anymore…or at least that was my experience. You’ll get more but it gets better!