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The Sting: Butler

Bees show a diabolical aptitude for selecting sensitive parts, and Butler says: - "When they are angry, their aim is most commonly at the head, and chiefly about the eyes, as knowing that there they may do most harm, for that part swelleth most and longest; and yet I never heard that any ever stung the very eye: as if they were forbidden to touch that tender part." Bee-keepers occasionally get a jet of poison in the eye, however, it being thrown out by an angry bee; the feelings of the victim upon such occasions may be left to the imagination.

When one is stung, the part swells and burns, and if the sting is about the face the head aches considerably for awhile. But on the whole it is soon over with most people, though some are so sensitive to this particular poison that even one sting is dangerous to them.

Cicero considers inability to endure a bee-sting a mark of very great effeminacy, as he tells us in "The Tusculan Questions": - "We, if the toe pain us, or the tooth, if a stitch is felt in the body, are unable to bear it; for there is a certain effeminate and light opinion in currency, not more in regard to pain than to pleasure, which, when it has melted us, and we flow with softness, we cannot withstand the sting of a bee without exclamation."

Bee-poison seems to be derived, by some strange alchemical process, from the nectar and pollen of flowers, and The Sting IOI bee-stings are most virulent in the summertime when the honey-flow is at its height; while in the winter they are comparatively harmless.

The ancients did not know what to do for bee-stings. Pliny frankly admitted that he knew of no remedy, and we of to-day are little better off, as application proves most of the remedies recommended to be useless or worse than useless.

Butler's advice is doubtless as good as any:- "When you are stung, instantly wipe out the bee, sting and all, and wash the place with your spittle; so shall you prevent both pain and swelling, which otherwise nothing but time can cure: for the poison is so subtle that it quickly penetrateth the flesh and the wound so small that no antidote can follow after."

Probably cold water very gently applied is as good as anything, for this reduces the inflammation, and very likely the use of mud so commonly recommended for stings is valuable because when once put on it precludes rubbing or other irritation and cools the inflamed part.

Above all things the wound should not be rubbed.

But first of all the sting should be taken out. For the pity of it is that the poor passion-blinded little morsel jabs it in and as a rule cannot get it out again!

Those numerous barbs hold too well.

In her fright, assisted by an agonized brush from your hand, she tears loose - and goes off minus her sting, helpless and wounded, for she leaves both sting and poisonsac behind her. It is said that if one is patient and strong-minded he will stand perfectly still and let her work it out again, walking around and around the wound as a man twists a corkscrew out of a cork, and that then she will not lose it, and the sting will not hurt as much as when it is left in. But few of us are self-controlled enough for that - and moreover what guarantee have we that she would not, finding herself free, angry and still potent, turn about and reward our forbearance with another stab? We prefer her death to our own pain, so we hasten her movements and shorten her life.

For the wages of anger in this case are death. Deprived of her sting and poison-sac and incidentally torn and wounded internally she soon dies - a sadder and a wiser bee - but as is often the case with those who learn wisdom by experience, acquiring that valuable attribute too late to profit by it.

When she thus leaves her sting as a legacy in the wound the poison continues to be forced out by the involuntary action of the muscles surrounding the poison-sac and of those driving the sting, which is the reason the sting should be extracted at once, a matter very easily accomplished. The sting should not be grasped between the fingers, as this squeezes the poison out of the sac into the wound, but it should be brushed or scraped out in a direction opposite to that in which it entered, or lifted out by inserting the blade of a knife or the finger-nail beneath it, as one withdraws a tack. The ancients knew the fatal consequences to the bee of using the sting, and Aristotle says:- "When they have stung anything they perish, for they cannot withdraw their sting from the wound without tearing their own entrails; but they are frequently saved, if the person stung will take care to press the sting from the wound; but when its sting is lost, the bee must perish." And Pliny gives us the following: - "Nature has provided bees with a sting, which is inserted in the abdomen of the insect. There are some who think that at the first blow which they inflict with this The Sting weapon they will instantly die; while others, again, are of opinion that such is not the case, unless the animal drives it so deep as to cause a portion of the intestines to follow; and they assert, also, that after they have thus lost their sting they become drones, and make no honey."

It is true, oh, ancient and respected naturalist, that, having lost its sting, our bee makes no more honey, but that it thereby becomes a drone is too much for a scientific age to credit.