Sting Stories

The occupational hazard of beekeeping

This is another in a continuing series of posts that follow the beekeeping column I recently concluded with the Boyertown Bulletin. It was a lot of fun to write about one of my favorite subjects for a local audience.

The Dreaded Sting | BEE SPACE - March 2024

As a teaser, this is what the bees looked like BEFORE I dropped them out of the tree:

Everyone has a sting story. My brother’s involved a few ground-nesting wasps finding their way into his diaper as a toddler to sting him on his bottom. In On Writing, Stephen King relates that his earliest memory involves a painful sting that resulted in him dropping a cinderblock on his toes. The nastiest stings can be as memorable as breaking a bone.

Beekeepers are the rare group that put themselves in sting’s way. I knew a beekeeper that became grossly allergic to his bees one day after barely swelling after stings for most of his beekeeping career. He had to crawl to the house for an EpiPen. The first time I installed bees from a package, I made the mistake of wearing a black fleece. Later, I learned that bees are far more nervous around someone dressed in black, perhaps associating the color with raiding bears. Six stings later, I learned my lesson. Another time, I got around two dozen stings dropping a swarm trap out of a tree. I’ll save that full story for a future column.

The mechanism of the bee sting is complex. Using its abdominal muscles – powerful relative to the insect’s size – a worker bee will thrust two lancets down into the skin of her victim. In electron microscope pictures, the lancets look like two tiny saw blades with backward facing barbs. They reciprocate, sawing downward. The alternating cutting action, combined with the downward force provided by the bees’ muscles, allow deep penetration of mammalian skin. The lancet’s reciprocating cutting action facilitates the pumping of the venom, and it’s all downhill from there.

As many know, a honey bee dies upon stinging. This is because the lancets, driven so far into the skin, cannot be extracted (wasps and other stinging insects have smooth stingers.) When the worker bee tries to move away, she disembowels herself. But the stinger remains, along with the venom bulb. Once, at a Montgomery County 4H club demonstration, a teacher stung himself with a worker bee and showed us the venom bulb under a magnifying glass. The little fleshy bulb pulsed, continuing to pump venom after the honey bee had ripped herself away. Fun fact: those bees that don’t die instantly from disembowelment will continue to try and bite you with their mandibles. Ask me how I know this.

At the advice of my doctor, I always keep an EpiPen or the generic equivalent around, because even if I am not highly allergic to bees, someone else on my property may be. Luckily, the injectors often come in a two pack, so I can put one in my house and the other in my beekeeping toolbox. I am not a doctor, so you should consult a medical professional for questions about stings or call 911 in an emergency.

Stings are an occupational hazard of beekeeping, and as I’ve said in previous columns, timing is everything. That also applies when it comes to surviving the honey bees’ most notorious defensive tool!

Will Caverly is the author of the beekeeping thriller Here, the Bees Sting and lives in Chester County with his family. Find more of his work at www.willcaverly.com. He loves to get questions at will.caverly@gmail.com.