As someone who is allergic but not phobic, that’s exactly what I do. But this is useless advice for someone who is phobic.
Not nearly as useless as performing all of the actions that practically guarantee a sting. Somehow the same people manage to avoid stepping in front of trains, swallowing gasoline, and putting their hands in fire.
I had an employee who was allergic to bee stings. She carried an epinephrine loaded syringe and everything. In the two years she worked for me she was stung while at work (entering/leaving the building or cig breaks) FOUR TIMES. During that same period nobody else was stung.
/anecdote
I have actually accidentally swallowed a bee. It didn’t sting me at any point (so far as I know.)
Are there really that many cases of accidental swallowings leading to death in bee sting cases?
In fact, it’s nothing like that bad.
I’ve seen 5-year-old kids that, when stung, cry for 30 seconds then get completely past it a minute later.
Did ya get a buzz?
They are phobic; ie, not acting rationally. Giving them sound advice about how to behave rationally is nice and all, but not effective.
My intention was to explain to the poster I replied to why some of us are annoyed by a disproportionate reaction to the presence of bees. The answer is: because the drama will likely cause (not prevent) the phobe or bystanders to be stung.
But the point stands: if one is able to avoid harm by other means, they may be able to avoid being harmed by bees. The fear may remain, but the actions must change if in fact they want to avoid a sting and the eye rolls of others.
In one of Steven Pinker’s books, he claims that the number of phobias that really exist in humans is extremely limited. Snakes, spiders, open spaces, one or two others.
All the rest that have been given fancy names (phobia of clowns, and such) don’t really occur, they are just names made up by somebody with a Greek dictionary.
I’m not sure whether I am accurately reporting what he wrote, nor whether it’s true.
The phobia of clustered holes (known as trypophobia) is an interesting one. From a couple of articles I have read, it is said to be exclusive to women, and to be rooted in a horror of seeing clustered holes in people’s skin. Having said that, clustered holes in people’s skin is pretty horrific, so if you are horrified by seeing that, it’s not really a phobia, just a normal reaction.
If you don’t have a phobia of fire or trains, it’s easy to not panic and run into a fire or onto the tracks. Explaining that flying is the safest form of travel isn’t really going to help a person who’s phobic of flying. It’s not just fear, it’s irrational overwhelming fear. There are ways to overcome true phobias but it’s not as simple as explaining why it’s wrong.
Clustered holes make me vaguely uneasy, including lotus roots. I think it’s rooted in seeing nature show footage of the Suriname Sea Toad as a kid. The baby toads emerge from holes on the mama toad’s back. You can google it if you want, I’m not about to look up a picture to link to. I can’t help but imagine that happening to a person and it makes my skin crawl.
May not be simple, but educating yourself about something you fear and something that negatively impacts your life is a step in the right direction.
My father knew a guy who suffered 3rd degree burns due to his wife’s methods of eliminating bees. She would try to sprinkle them with petrol, which works quite well, but also spreads petrol. He was smoker and unaware that she had crop dusted the bathroom earlier trying to get rid of the pests. The gas was still floating on top of the water. I don’t know all the details but I’m assuming he smokes on the throne and tips the ashes in bowl 
The story went that he also broke some of his ribs that same day. He fell off the stretcher while the paramedics were trying to help him out of the house. Half because he was yelling at his wife and half because the paramedics couldn’t stop laughing.
Urban legend, mixed with occasional similar occurrences.
My husband does the freak and flail thing.
Which is really vastly amusing, because his parents keep bees, and he was quite interested in getting a hive for our own yard and keeping bees also. Until we spent an assload of money on the suits and such, and started helping out his parents, and he flipped out and ran.
I was actually pretty shocked. I’m phobic of spiders. If you got a 5 year old with a purple crayon (my favorite color) and asked them to draw a spider, if I KNEW it was supposed to be a spider, I would not be able to touch it. I literally feel my fingers burning as I get close, and I can’t control my muscles to make contact - I’ve tried. Being that phobic is a huge pain in the ass.
I work at a library, and when kids check out the spider books, I have to have my co-workers process those books while I go in the back office. One caught me by surprise one time, and I went backwards off my chair into the wall, screaming. Got an awful goose-egg, traumatized the kid, and sent lots of books flying. Had to explain that one to the library director. :o
Totally in my head, totally irrational. Does nothing to make it less frightening or frustrating. On the other hand, I’m sure spiders love me, because there is no way in hell that I will ever manage to kill one myself.
So, I was expecting to be the one leery of the bees, not my big strong spider-killing husband. But no - they can crawl all over me, go on hands and arms and across my face-shield (which is pretty cool, cause I can see all their little leg bits working). He gets close to the hives, and manages about 5 minutes before he has to back off to more than 30 feet.
He says its the combination of the swooping motions past his eyes and the buzzing noise. He’s been stung before, and shrugged it off - he said it didn’t really hurt. (I got stung on my scalp, and it DID hurt, but only for about an hour. I think if it hadn’t been on my head, it would have hurt less.) He really likes bees when they’re on flowers or around plants, just not flying anywhere near him. Very strange to discover.
At least now I can balance out my spider debts by protecting him from bees and wasps.
I can’t really call that a phobia (because I know how actual phobic react and I’m not up to that point), but I do have a deeply seated disgust of clustered holes and feel a strong need to bleach my brain after seeing such a structure. That’s the reason it came to my mind in a previous post.
I you make a search for “trypophobia” on this board you’ll find several threads about it. There’s a surprising number of people with this phobia (to various extents) amongst dopers, and, I assume as a result, in the general population. I used to believe I was the only one with this weird quirk (as did most others). It’s much more extensive than just clustered holes in human skin (even though that has to be one of the worst things imaginable). Speaking of wasps, a wasp nest is a pretty good example of something I abhor, for instance. Also not all people with this phobia are females (I’m male, for the record).
As for people believing that phobics are acting out, well…I guess it’s their right to wallow into ignorance and decide that a real phenomenon doesn’t exist. Until their new girlfriend, child or whatever will turn out to be phobic and they will have to deal with the issue (for the record, my first girlfriend had a phobia of bees…welll…of any yellow striped insect that stings, actually). Obviously the intensity of phobia varies a lot from an individual to another.
As for being only three kind of actual phobias : it’s patently false, and even moreso since in the list of three is included the fear of open spaces (agoraphobia) which despite its name is not a phobia, and in fact isn’t a fear of open spaces, either. It’s a peculiar kind of anxiety disorder unrelated to phobias, with different diagnose and treatments.
“Apis” is Latin. “Melissa” is Greek. The name “Melissa” actually means “honey bee”.
That makes “aphipobia” yet another one of those hybrid Greek-Latin words English seems to breed like weeds. Like “neurotransmitter”. “automobile”, “television” and “electrocution”.
OK, hijack done.
Paging Guadere.
I’m not sure what your point is, seeing as I already don’t do any of those things.
I thought my post was pretty clear, but here goes: I appreciate those behaviours even less than you do, but I also think getting so snit up about it is abhorrent.
That’s one epic hijack and another reason for me to love the English language.