I got stung by yellow jackets last year and that was WAY more painful. Even with precautions, beekeepers can be stung, but most see this as an occasional annoyance. Professional and hobbyist beekeepers wear bee suits, gloves and masks to help protect themselves from bee stings and treat hives with smoke to calm bees. Most bee stings happen when people accidentally step on or sit on a bee, if they make contact while trying to swat a bee or wasp away, or if they come too close to a hive. Under normal circumstances, bees are docile, ignore people and are preoccupied with foraging for food and bringing it back to their hive. Because honeybee stingers are barbed, they become attached to the skin, and the stinger and the venom sack are torn away from the bee after she stings and flies away.īee stings only occur when bees feel that they or their hive are threatened. Honeybee stings often include the stinger-a black needle with a bulbous end. To learn more about bee sting symptoms, visit What does a bee sting look like?īee stings usually appear as a swollen, red welt, with a white spot where the stinger was injected into your skin. This can be serious for children, older adults and those with heart or breathing problems, who should seek emergency medical care. If stung more than a dozen times, the accumulated venom can cause a reaction similar to anaphylaxis. Anaphylaxis can be life threatening and requires emergency treatment. Severe stings involve an intense allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis, which can include hives difficulty breathing throat swelling a weak, rapid pulse nausea, vomiting or diarrhea dizziness, fainting or loss of consciousness.Symptoms of moderate stings usually go away within 5-10 days. Moderate stings include both sharp pain and extreme redness around the sting, with swelling that gradually enlarges over the next day or two.Mild stings, which are by far the most common, are characterized by sharp, burning pain, with a red welt and slight swelling around the sting area.Bees are not aggressive, and sting only when they or their colony is threatened.Īccording to the Mayo Clinic, bee stings may present as mild, moderate or severe: The purpose of stinging is purely defensive, and is meant to scare away attackers, not kill them. While the venom in different bee species is fairly similar, there are enough differences in their apitoxin chemistry to make some people allergic to the sting of one type of bee and not allergic to the others. Bumblebee stings are slightly more painrful than honeybee stings, and wasps stings are even more painful. Bee swarming is a harmless activity, and a time when honeybees are at their most docile.īumblebees and wasps have relatively smooth stingers and can sting multiple times. Dozens of bees defending their hive from attack should not be confused with swarming, where thousands of bees leave their nest to form a new colony. When honeybees sting they release alarm pheromones that signal a threat to nearby bees, who may join in defense of the hive. With smooth stingers, bumblebees and wasps can sting multiple times with barbed stingers, honeybees can sting only once.Ī honeybee’s barbed stinger holds fast in the wound, and is torn out of the bee’s body when she flies away. While most bees can sting, some species are stingless, defending themselves by biting. The most common bee stings are from honeybees, bumblebees and wasps, and for the majority of people, pose no health risk. Histamines make up about 9%, and cause the longer-term swelling and itching that follow initial pain. The amino acid Melittin makes up almost half of the venom by dry weight and is the primary cause of the immediate, sharp pain that we call a bee sting. The venom, known as apitoxin, is comprised of enzymes, amino acids (including histamines), and peptides. A bee sting is a small wound caused when a bee punctures the skin of a perceived attacker with its stinger, injecting venom into the attacker’s body.
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