I haven’t been stung since I was 12, and that was either by a bee or a yellow jacket. I probably couldn’t have told the difference at the time.
Well, today I was stung by a wasp, and it hurt way more than I remember either of the two bee stings I had as a child. I can feel it quite a bit three and a half hours later, but for the hour or so following the sting is was just amazing. I was limping because of the pain.
So, do wasp stings in general hurt more?
Check the Schmidt Pain Index. According to it a wasp sting rates a 3.0. “Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of Hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.” whereas a yellowjacket rates a 2.0, “Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.” and a simple bee sting rates a 1.0 “Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.”
That index ranks a Honey Bee at 2.x. I don’t know what a Sweat Bee is, but that’s the one listed as 1.0.
Me either, that’s why I called it a ‘simple bee’. It’s safe to assume any bee/wasp/hornet will be somewhere between a 1.0 and a 3.0. Of course tolerance to pain being a very relative thing the index is only a rough guide for comparison.
Sweat Bees look like little yellowjackets, and are probably a very similar but smaller wasp.
I would think the size of the bee would be a factor. And if it’s not a random encounter with a lone bee, the number of stings may be a bigger concern.
Actually, that last is a sweat bee. He ranks the honey bee at 2.0. “Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.”.
ETA:
That’s what I get for looking around for a more complete list before clicking “post”. Offhand, I can’t find one. He did 78 species, supposedly.
All I can say is this Schmidt guy really took one for the team in compiling this index…
One reason I’d like to find a more complete list is to know whether he voluntarily took one form the Asian giant hornet.
I’m also curious how he ranked the bumble bee and carpenter bee.
Addendum: Schmidt is listed in the references for that article, concerning the lethality of the venom, but it doesn’t say he let one sting him.
Stung twice in two days in roughly the same area. The first was a yellow jacket–like a white hot poker and the burning continued for about a couple hours, and then feeling like a hypersensitive bruise for the rest of the day. The next day, a honeybee stung a half-inch away from the Y-J site, pain was sharper initially, but rapidly subsided. It’s difficult to describe, but after an hour it the site felt “numbed” and at some twisted level “enjoyable”.
I’ve heard people using bee stings as a palliative for arthritis in the joints. Was my post bee-sting experience an example of this?
I can’t find the complete index anywhere either. I think it was published in “Hemolytic activities of stinging insect venoms” which, as far as I can tell, he would like to be paid for.
But from what I’ve read it seems his interest is in why ants and bees can ‘trick’ opponents over a million times their size into fleeing with mere pain but no physical damage or danger. So he doesn’t seem to include any insects that do cause physical danger to the stingee.
The pain from the Asian giant hornet apparently isn’t just a ‘trick’. Their venom actually contains a neurotoxin that is dangerous to non-allergic humans - he may be dedicated but he isn’t stupid.
The complete and updated index was apparently published in:
Schmidt, Justin O. “Hymenoptera venoms: striving toward the ultimate defense against vertebrates” in D. L. Evans and J. O. Schmidt (Eds.), “Insect defenses: adaptive mechanisms and strategies of prey and predators” pp. 387–419, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1990.
But I can’t find a free online version of that one either.
I’m not sure how he rated the stings, but I disagree with a couple of points. I have had the “luck” to encounter a rather large number of wasps and bees throughout my life, (not sure why, I certainly don’t go looking for them–thankfully, I do not appear to be allergic), and I would rate a Bald-Faced Hornet as MUCH HOTTER than several critters that he rates as worse.
My most recent encouner was with a paper wasp of some sort. It stung, but I got ice on the sting immediately and not only did the pain immediately drop off, but I never got the swelling and itching that drives me nuts with those things.
It is hard to get them to sting one, so he might have not even bothered. They look big and ferocious, and sound terrifying, but they are actually pretty gentle.
Yes, and the carpenter bee which is buzzing in front of your face is probably a male, which can’t sting anyway. References on carpenter bees will refer to the sting the female can deliver as “surprisingly mild” or some such description. I’m curious as to what Schmidt might think. Given that he did so many species, I would expect him to have covered the common North American species like bumble bees and carpenter bees.
I think within these general relative comparisons there is still a bunch of room for variation and overlap. Each sting or bite comes with a lot of variables like where on the body it occured, how well it penetrated the skin, how much venom was actually absorbed, etc. It’s probably always safe to assume the 4.0’s will be extremely painful and the 1.0’s will be relatively mild, and everything in-between is subject to some overlap.
I’ve been stung by lots of bees and wasps and several pretty painful ants and an asp, but by far the most painful sting I have had was a blue scorpionin the South of Mexico
Schmidt isn’t interested in scorpions, but I have to imagine that was equal to or greater than the bullet ant which he rates as the most painful. It was like an electric shock - thousands of the little “needles” that you feel if your foot falls asleep and starts to wake back up but magnified by ten thousand, each one intense enough to be very painful. That lasted for about 3-5 hours accompanied by an intense ache like the area was being hit with a hammer the entire time, which lasted for about 8 hours.
The park where I worked in Costa Rica was known for its diversity of stinging insects and I had close encounters with several of them. As others have noted, it matters where the insect stings you, the amount of venom released, and your own body’s reaction. For me, unlike Schmidt, a honey bee hurts less than an acacia ant.
The worst stings I’ve had were from the subfamily Polistinae, although I’m not sure the species. The stings themselves weren’t bad (much easier to take than bullet ants), but the painful itching and swelling made me miserable. It has been my experience that wasp stings are worse, but I’ve only been stung by North American wasp/bees.
I would like to think that it varies by person. I was stung on the palm of my hand by what I think was a bee because part of it was still left in me and I flicked it off.
People tend to describe bee stings as on the milder end of the spectrum, but…wow. That was definitely one of my most painful experiences. Sharp hot pain for 2+ hours. Area was mildly swollen and hard to the touch for days.
Either I reacted to that differently than most people or I am the world’s largest wimp.
Yellow jackets are in fact a type of wasp - and in my memory, their sting hurt far more than that of any bee. I’ve been stung by a couple of sweat bees over the past decade or so, and a couple of years ago I was stung by a bumble bee. None of the bee stings hurt very badly; I don’t think they were any worse than being snapped by a large rubber band. The last time I was stung by a yellowjacket was 23 years ago, and that’s not just a lucky streak: that sting was extremely painful, and I have assiduously avoided conflict with yellowjackets ever since.