Well, this one didn’t even have the decency to honk!
That’s the way yellow jackets are. They just attack without warning. That’s why I’ve never been a fan of Georgia Tech. 
So… am I allergic to bee stings? Should I be carrying some kind of kit?
I was once stung on my thigh by a hornet, I was 9 at the time. I’m 32 now and I still have a scar. My entire thigh puffed up.
The last time I was stung, it was on the last knuckle of my pinky and my entire arm puffed up.
I thought that was normal for everybody until last week when my co-worker was complaining that she’d just been stung. It just looked like a really big mosquito bite to me, nothing like the extreme puffing up that I get.
Er… should I be carrying some kind of Bee Pill? AAK! Am I gonna die I’ve I’m stung???
faints
“I got stung on the wrist.”
Pfffft - I laugh at your wrist sting.
When I was 6 years old a hornet flew behind the lens of my glasses and stung me IN THE EYE. Now that smarts. Alot.
To this day if I find a wasp, yellow jacket, or hornet’s nest I go nuclear on it. For wasps, saturate it with whatever Raid product I’ve got, then burn it. For yellow jackets I wait 'til dusk,when they’re all cozy and snug in their little yellow jacket beds, the mommy yellow-jackets are reading bed time stories to the wee, little larvae, and the daddy yellow jackets are thinking of all the hot, sweaty, yellow jacket sex that they’re going to get from mommy yellow jacket later on that evening, AND THEN I POUR GASOLINE DOWN THE HOLE, STEP BACK, AND THROW A LIT MATCH TO THEIR WHOLE, INFERNAL YELLOW JACKET APARTMENT COMPLEX! DIE YOU SONS OF BITCHES! ROAST IN HELL! YOU ARE TOKYO AND I AM GODZILLA!
I’m serious folks - I hate things that fly and sting.
I’ve posted this before, but it’s still a great horror story.
We have an old farm house. My son kept complaining about bees in his room. Well, being the doting mother I was, I would tell him, “That’s what you get when you leave your windows open!” A few weeks pass and he’s complaining about bees dive-bombing him when he takes the garbage out to the road. Then more complaining with the bees in his room.
Exasperated, I go up in his room and sure enough, he’s got about a dozen dead bees on the bed and a couple drunk-looking ones cruising around the window. So I call the exterminator. He finds the spot where they’re coming out and sprinkles some white powder around it.
This powder has totally pissed the bees off. Doesn’t kill them, but they’re about as mad as a bunch o’ hornets, fercrissakes! So I call another, more skillful exterminator. He sends his team after sundown. They listen to the walls with stethoscopes and snoop around. They decide they’ll have to remove the wood siding and poison the bejeezus out of ‘em. Well, I guess they missed the first time, because the bees went berserk and started attacking the workers. One of them was a woman. She whipped her shirt off and went running through the yard all freakin’ out (Mr. Kalhoun really liked this part of the process!). Finally, they doused the hive and the little fuckers all died. Then the workers went into the opening and removed four layers of hive, twelve feet tall. And approximately 10,000 bees. I had nightmares for a few days, but the little bastards never returned.
Wow, Kalhoun. Quite a story!
I’ve managed to get swarmed on by wasps or bees three times in my life. The worst was the first. Around 12 years of age, I spied a yellow jacket nest, the buggers were flying in and out of a hole in the ground. I had a stick. I thought that I could jam the stick in the hole and outrun the subsequent swarm of angry wasps. Boy! Was I ever wrong!!! They were all over me in a heartbeat! I discovered, to my horror, that yellow jackets not only sting, but have strong jaws that can deliver a painful bite. As I ran and swatted, I watched as a yellow jacket sank its stinger into the fat of my thumb and then sank its jaws into the flesh as well, taking out a large chunk and flying away! The little critter managed to get lunch out of the deal! Fortunately, I am not allergic and managed to live to be stung numerous times in the future.
You can get tested to see if you’re allergic (it sure sounds like you are). If you test positive, your doctor will give you a prescription for a “bee sting kit.” It’s an injectible dose of epinepherine.
Really? I thought you couldn’t be tested for bee stings… The last time I asked they said, “no, there is no test for bee stings.” But that was a very, very long time ago, after the sting that left the scar on my thigh.
So perhaps things have changed.
I’ll call my GP and ask.
Er, what does the test involve?
There’s both a skin test and a blood test. Here’s a site that explains them a little. With a skin test, a little serum is injected just under the top layers of skin, and you’re observed for sensitivity.
I was stung on the bottom of my foot when I was about three. It was traumatic. My brother told me it was a bee, and therefore had died to sting me. That made me feel a bit better. 
There was a bee in my room one summer when I was 16 or so. I left this note for my dad:
Bee in house.
I’ll be out.
Call when bee is dead.
I hate bees.
Ah, so it’s a right away kind of thing. That’s good. I got tested for other stuff and they taped all this crap to my back for 24 hours. It sucked.
But a pin-prick followed by waiting for Crayons to keel over sounds much better.
As long as they don’t tape crap to my back.
I’ve only been stung four times in my life. Always by those black and yellow hornet things that harass you at picnics.
Once was my fault entirely because my schoolmates and I were bashing the crap out of hornets on a dumpster with our plastic rulers, killing them one at a time.
What? It seemed like a good idea back in the sixth grade.
All stinging creatures pretty much leave me alone. The only time I’ve been stung is when I stepped on a dead bumblebee when I was 8. and last year I kind of had a head on collision with a ground hornet. But I’m a magnet for spiders. I’get bit atleast once a year.
Kalhoun’s story reminded me of an actress I saw on some talk show recently, who said that bees had invaded the walls of her house, and she had honey dripping from the eaves. :eek:
Pat: “This bee sting sure makes my wrist smart!”
Mike: “Ye’ should get one t’ sting ye’ on the head, then!”
So, HillBilly Queen, you are the only person I know who could answer “Yes” to Walter Brennan’s question in *To Have and Have Not * … “Ya ever been bit by a dead bee?”
We currently have a paper wasp nest in our backyard, under the top rail of a fence and overlooking my cherry tomato plant. It’s a little nest, consisting of only about eight or ten cells, and seems to be in inhabited only by the original queen and one or two workers (must be a starter nest). I keep a wary eye on it as I pick my tomatoes, but so far the wasps completely ignore my existence. I don’t mind having them around, as they entertain me by plucking little caterpillars off my flowers and chewing minute amounts of wood off of fence posts to build new paper cells. Just don’t spring any of those giant hornets on me, though. Those bastards look mean!
Glad you’re doing better, Eve. If you didn’t know it before, I presume you now know that Benadryl is an excellent sleeping aid. I take it once or twice a year for insomnia.
I got swarmed by a nest of yellow jackets once! I was working for the power company, and looking up at the lines, I didn’t see when I stood on a ground nest. I heard an angry buzzing and looked down at my arm to see three yellow jackets sting me, all at the same time. I freaked. Ran up the hill, dropping my $1000 portable computer, ditching my orange vest, and screaming at the top of my lungs. I emerged from the brush into some poor kids’ driveway where I’d left my vehicle. The entire time I am slapping and swatting and running around. Each time I get another sting, I howl in pain. Half way to my car I realize that I can’t just leave the computer in the road, so I go back for it. Looking up, I see two kids standing at the end of the driveway, frozen in terror and uncertainty. I jump into my car, and drive down to the main road, killing the four or five little bastards that got into the car in the meantime. I call my boss, he calls 911. I then nearly pass out on the side of the road waiting for the ambulance. My first ambulance ride! Let me tell you, it was interesting enough, but nothing like a combo of epinephrine and benadryl pumping in your bloodstream. Now that was interesting.
I had over 30 full-venom stings and countless bites all over my body. My face looked like a cabbage patch doll. My arm actually sustained mild nerve damage (basically it itches and twinges sometimes for no reason.) I nearly had a panic attack everytime I felt anything poke me for about the next year or so.
The funny part was when I went back to the property, I had a conversation with the woman whose kids saw me that day. She said they thought I was a druggie, freaking out on LSD or something! I explained to her what had happened, and she laughed. She said I scared them pretty good. I bet! I must have looked like a lunatic from far away!
So thank your lucky stars only one of the little buggers got you!
I just spent 10 minutes trying to come up with a Macauley Culkin “My Girl” joke, Eve, and I’m sad to say nothing came of it.
In any event, be sure to be careful. Stings is no fun. 
I got stung countless times when I was kid, often due to my meddling with bees (I used to wait for them to go into foxgloves then trap them inside - I was a little git, I admit) and wasps and things but also often just by chance. The most memorable was when I got stung in the 'nads whilst playing in the garden, that was fun!