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The Sting: Thorley

Thorley tells an affecting tale of a man who undertook to remove a swarm of bees from a tree.

He climbed to the hole, swept the bees out with a brush of weeds, and stopped up the hole so they could not return. "This done," continues Thorley, "down he came surrounded with the enemy, resolved to revenge so great an injury, though with the loss of their lives. They fell upon him with the greatest fury imaginable, indeed affecting to behold, but I durst not offer him any assistance or relief. They charged him in flank, front and rear; clung to him, like ivy to the tree; got under his covering, into his hair, and under his clothes; and stung him from head to foot: he in like manner defended himself to the utmost of his power, fighting gallantly and slaying without mercy; but having no second, suffered extremely. "It was a considerable time before the battle was ended, and he had entirely disengaged himself, at which time I suffered him to come to me, when hundreds of stings stuck in his hat, mittens, etc., besides a considerable number left in his body, the poison of which presently inflamed his blood and threw him into a violent fever which threatened his life. To bed he went; the fever increasing, his life hung in suspense for at least two entire days. Toward the close of the third day it began to abate; and being a man of a strong and vigorous constitution he recovered, and in a few days more was perfectly well, to the great joy of his family, and other friends."

Thorley believed that about a third of the bees were destroyed in this engagement.

There are many cases on record of people being stung to death, and Aristotle and Pliny mention that animals as large as horses have been known to be set upon and killed by bees.

Mules are apt to suffer greatly from bees, being of a natural disposition which forbids them to run when set upon. When stung by a bee a mule kicks, and if it chances The Sting to kick over a hive every bee in it is eager to give the mule a touching proof of its feelings towards the destroyer of homes.

It once happened that a hapless donkey kicked over a whole apiary when it soon swelled to proportions never attained by a donkey in an equal length of time under any other circumstances, and perished on the spot.

The best remedy when attacked by a number of bees is to go into the house, as bees will seldom follow one indoors.

Too much bee-poison may prove as fatal as any other poison, to say nothing of the frightful nervous excitement caused by such a terrible event.

While many stings received at one time may be the cause of great suffering, or even loss of life, it is well known that a few stings received at intervals give most people immunity from the poison, and that one who handles bees and has been stung a number of times sometimes comes to mind it little more than a mosquito bite.

One bee-keeper is said to have advised his pupils to allow themselves to be stung!

Just how many inoculations are necessary to the production of this convenient immunity is not stated, and whether a "virus" of bee-poison can be made for common use remains to be seen.

There is a story current of a noted bee-keeper who being ornamented with a bald head, a most inconvenient blessing for a bee-keeper, one should suppose, in the height of the fray when many swarms had to be hived and handled in a limited time, was seen going placidly about with the top of his head plentifully adorned with bee stings, he not having troubled himself even to remove them!

As prevention is better than cure - particularly in the case of bee-stings - those needing to handle bees some- IIO times cover their hands with certain aromatic substances, one of the most popular of which is oil of wintergreen; when for some reason best known to themselves the irate little insects discovering the foreign substance with their sensitive feelers decline to add their own aroma to it. But better even than wintergreen oil is the advice given by Butler : - "If thou wilt have the favor of thy bees, that they sting thee not, thou must avoid such things as offend them : thou must not be unchaste or uncleanly; for impurity and sluttiness (themselves being most chaste and neat) they utterly abhor; thou must not come among them smelling of sweat, or having a stinking breath, caused either through eating of leeks, onions, garlick, and the like, or by any other means, the noisesomeness whereof is corrected by a cup of beer; thou must not be given to surfeiting or drunkenness; thou must not come puffing or blowing unto them, neither hastily stir among them, nor resolutely defend thyself when they seem to threaten thee; but softly moving thy hand before thy face, gently put them by; and lastly, thou must be no stranger unto them. In a word, thou must be chaste, cleanly, sweet, sober, quiet, and familiar; so will they love thee, and know thee from all others. When nothing hath angered them, one may safely walk along by them; but if he stand still before them in the heat of the day, it is a marvel but one or other spying him, will have a cast at him."

The advantage of following the above advice is that whether it has the desired effect upon the bees or not, it cannot fail, in most parts, to be of benefit to the one who practises it.

Further, Cotton thus quaintly and kindly advises us concerning the handling of bees : - "If you want to do anything to a single bee, catch him The Sting 'as if you loved him,' between your finger and thumb, where the tail joins on to the body, and he cannot hurt you."

If you want to do anything to your whole hive of bees, however, it is impossible to follow Cotton's advice, and instead you would do well to wear a bee hat, which has a broad brim and a veil fitting over the shoulders.

And unless your bees love you as well as you them, it would be well to put on gloves and tie them over the ends of your sleeves above the wrists.

Although bee-poison produces such an unpleasant effect upon healthy people it is known to possess valuable medicinal properties, and in an early number of the "Bienenzeitung" we read of a man who discovered a use for bee-stings that would have delighted Moffett and his predecessors, who were so puzzled to find a good use for these weapons. The man in question had rheumatism, and while handling his bees was stung upon the rheumatic member, when, greatly to his surprise, all traces of rheumatism disappeared. Profiting by his discovery he repaired to the apiary upon the next appearance of the disease and induced his bees to sting him into health again.

Others have testified to a similar experience, and moreover bee-poison has a recognized place in medicine, being used in diphtheria, eye diseases, hydrocephalus in young children, erysipelas, cholera, certain fevers, and other diseases.

Constantine Hering says: - "Among all our drugs this is the one of which we have the most preparations. There is but one right kind. It is the pure poison, which is obtained by grasping the bee with a small forceps, and catching the minute drop of virus suspended from the point of the sting, in a vial or watch crystal."

From the Homœopathic Pharmacopœia we get the following: - "Draw out the sting together with the poison-bag from bees freshly killed. Taking hold of the bag, insert the point of the sting into a small glass tube and squeeze the poison into it. Or take a live bee with a pair of pincers and allow it to take hold of a small lump of sugar. It will immediately sting into the sugar which will absorb the poison. Repeat this process until enough is accumulated to start a trituration."

Sometimes whole bees are used; in which case, the "live bees, put into a bottle, are irritated by shaking, and then drenched with five times their weight of dilute alcohol, and allowed to remain eight days, being shaken twice a day. The tincture is then poured off, strained, and filtered." Sometimes the bee-keeper is requested to supply beestings, instead of bees or honey, not for the pleasure but for the cure of ailing man.