Never ever been stung, and I’m going on 26. People can’t believe it when I tell them. Didn’t realize it was so rare to stay unstung so long. But then, I never walk around barefoot if I can help it, and I hate bugs so I stay away from them as much as I can.
'Cause it was stuck on my nose - it’s little legs grabbed the bridge of my nose and it pumped its little stinger in and out like Hal Briston right before a 4H meeting, and I was busy flailing about, falling over and going “AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHH!”
My dad finally made it over the side of the boat to where I was standing and thwacked me on the nose with a rolled up newspaper to get it off.
- Yes.
- The babysitter told me not to go outside barefoot, or I’d step on a bee. I did anyway, and stepped on a bee before going 5 steps. When you squish one like that, you get all the venom at once. Nasty jolt for a 5-year-old. I was crying, scared, and mad at Mrs. Gibbs. I didn’t know what a bee was until then.
- Maybe 20-25 times. Once a “sweat bee” got me on my eyelid. I learned to co-exist with honeybees by moving slowly. I’ve run away from plenty of paper wasps after I disturbed their nests. The mud-daubers aren’t nearly as grouchy. Carpenter bees really pack a wallop, especially after you’ve mowed over their nest.
Numerous times, by bees and wasps, without any lasting effect.
I don’t remember the first time but one was more memorable than the others.
I went to bed and put my head on the pillow in the dark. Unfortunately I didn’t notice a wasp that promptly stung into my cheek right under my left eye. That was a bit surprising and I couldn’t open that eye properly for a while.
<Snort!>
Never been stung? Do you live in one of those hermetically sealed bubbles or something?
I don’t remember the first time I was stung, I don’t think I possessed language back then.
[Billy Crystal as Dr. Ben Sobol]
Are you asking how many times overall have I been stung? Or are you asking how many times have I been stung overall? Because I have been stung overall a couple of times, let me tell you, when you are chainsawing down little saplings to widen the trail through the woods, you do not want to chainsaw your way through a grey football-shaped wasps’ nest, they don’t like it when you do that, and if you don’t notice right away you are going to get stung overall, believe me. Now if you are asking how many times overall have I been stung, I dunno about that, that’s a question for the ages. I never thought to keep count, you get what I’m saying?
[/Crystal]
Nope. And I’m certain I’m one of those people who will die from it.
Like most people I’ve been stung by wasps quite a few times - the worst being when me and a childhood friend decided to pass some time by leaping repeatedly into a dense rhododendron bush (well, we were kids). We soon discovered that some wasps lived there.
I’ve only been stung by a bee once, and I definitely remember it hurting more than a wasp. Maybe it’s because you can see part of the bee still attached to your body. Nasty.
1) Have you ever been stung (by any flying insect)?
Yep - European honeybees, wasps, skeeters, spiders, &c.
2) If so, what do you remember about your first experience being stung? How serious an effect did it have on you, both physically and psychologically?
I don’t remember the first time; my neighborhood was lousy with bees.
Once, when I was six or seven, I was hanging upside down from a horizontal branch of a honeysuckle bush in a little patch of scrub woods behind my house. I lost my grip, and fell maybe four feet straight down, flat on my back on to a rotten section of log, which disintegrated. Naturally, it contained a bee’s nest.
The swarm chased me and my buddy all the way back to the house, and they stung us until my mom ran out and squirted us down with the garden hose.
3) How many times have you been stung overall?
Maybe a dozen incidents, with maybe a hundred individual stings. Not counting mosquitos.
Well, I grew up in South Central LA, and I just assume most flying insects were afraid to cross into that territory. Since then, I’ve been a combination of terrified and lucky, I presume. 
I’ve been stung at least once by a bumble bee, but not in about 40 years. I don’t really remember the incident, only that it happened. Since then, I’ve developed an unhealthy fear of bees, volunteering to go out of my way to avoid them. So far, I’ve been lucky. Other than mosquitoes, I haven’t been bitten by anything else.
I was first stung by a bee when I was four or five. As several other posters whose earliest bee stings occurred when they were very young, mine was pretty traumatic. I had fallen in the grass and my thumb landed on a critter I then identified as a bumblebee. (It may have been some other wasp or bee. I have since read evidence and had experience with bumblebees that indicate that they are unlikely to sting. On the other hand, since I was effectively (if not intentionally) trying to smash her, whatever it was decided to fight back.
It was very painful, it caused my thumb to swell up enormously (and took a long time for the swelling to go down) and it pretty much turned me into someone who was deathly afraid of anything with a stinger for many years.
My next sting was incurred when I was around twelve. Walking through a field I pissed off some sort of harpoon bearing insect which promptly stung me on the calf of my leg. The sting barely hurt, at all, although the half-dollar sized swelling was tender, then itchy, for several days.
When I was seventeen, I rolled a brush cutter over a yellow jacket nest, irritating them quite a bit. Three of them got me before I could get the mower far enough away to abandon it while they calmed down. My boss was really concerned and ordered me to take the rest of the day off, but by the time we were discussing it, the pain had already gone away (to be replaced by the inevitable itching the next day).
Then, years later, I had the summer of the stings. A bald-faced hornet got me on the finger when I grabbed a bale of straw just where she was sunning herself. A few weeks later, I tramped on a yellow jacket nest hauling a manure cart through high grass, and picked up another three to five stings. Then I was mowing the ditch with the hand mower and disrupted a couple of really pretty purple wasps who both demonstrated their displeasure on my leg.
In each case, the initial sting varied between hot, piercing pain (the bald hornet on the finger) and mild “jabbed with tack or a splinter” discomfort (the purple wasps on the leg), dying down in all cases in just a few minutes. The aggravating discomfort is the infernal itching that follows (although it is handled pretty well with any of the anti-itch medications–Cortaid, Benadryl, or even Bactine.
I don’t go looking for things to sting me, but (provided you are not allergic), I don’t consider them any big deal.
Never.
I’ve never dodged bees or wasps and I have no fear of them or their sting.
35 years so far. Hopefully I can go a few more without being stung.
I was stung by wasps first, I was probably 5 years old, but it wasn’t that traumatic, I guess. I took to collecting insects soon after.
I’ve been nailed by bees probably 7 or eight times, but I found that rubbing the area vigorously takes away the sting within a few minutes. Not that big of a deal. I got bitten by a wasp once, which was worse than getting stung!
Oh, almost forgot to mention uncountable mosquito and no-see-um bites on camping trips through the years.
I’ve never been stung by anything, except that time I sat down on an ants’ nest as a kid but that’s not really stinging. Not much fun all the same! I’m kind of wary of bees and wasps because I have no idea if I’m allergic.
1) Have you ever been stung (by any flying insect)?
Yes, bees and yellowjackets.
2) If so, what do you remember about your first experience being stung? How serious an effect did it have on you, both physically and psychologically?
The first time I was stung by a bee I was five years old, but I don’t remember much about that incident. The first memorable incident occurred on the first day of school in the fourth grade. Over the course of the summer a yellowjacket nest had been built in a group of trees on the playground. Several of us were playing in these trees when suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by a loud, angry swarm of these horrible yellowjackets. The noise was the most frightening part. Several of us were stung and had to go to the nurse’s station. I took a sting to my chest and another one on the inside of my left arm elbow joint. It was quite scary and painful, though I only experienced average swelling in the affected areas. Ever since that incident I have been deathly afraid of bees and wasps. Any time one of them comes within five feet of me I flee and seek cover. It’s very embarrassing at family reunions and other events where I am outside amongst others and I’m confronted by a bee, wasp, yellowjacket, hornet, whatever. The psychological impact was very great indeed.
3) How many times have you been stung overall?
Very few times, thank God. I don’t spend much time outdoors partly for this reason (that, and I hate being out in the sun).
It’s been probably ten years since my last sting. I was playing outside at my grandparents’s house (I don’t remember my age, though I was definitely preadolescent.) I don’t recall if I provoked the bee or not, but I was stung on my right forearm.
I don’t remember my first sting (though it may have been the one I listed above.) I guess it didn’t have much of an effect on me.
My brother on the other hand was profoundly affected by his first sting.
It’s been over ten years since my last sting. I was playing outside at my grandparent’s house (I don’t remember my age, though I was definitely preadolescent, probably between 6 and 11.) I don’t recall if I provoked the bee or not, but I was stung on my right forearm.
I don’t remember my first sting (though it may have been the one I listed above.) I guess it didn’t have much of an effect on me.
My brother on the other hand was profoundly affected by his first sting. He was around 5 or six at the time (I think.) We were at the pool and he was drinking from a can of soda. He left it sitting fro a few minutes as he went off to play. When he got back, he lifted the can and out comes an angry bee. My brother jerks away, but manages to spook the bee which stung him right on the ear. Ouch! The poor kid was positively phobic about bees the rest of the summer and for about a year after that. He’s a teen now and the fear has subsided to normal levels.
Sorry about the double post (now triple post.)
Yes.
I remember it vividly. I was about 28 years old, I had just gotten out of the swimming pool. I felt something tickling my stomach, which I thought was a trickle of water. When I bent down to pick up a snorkel, though, I felt a sharp pain. I looked down, and I saw a wasp on the skin of my stomach where the pain was located. I freaked out a little, and brushed at it with my hand. It fell to the ground. I slammed it with the snorkel and smashed it to pieces. The pain wasn’t too bad, but it took me a while (maybe 15 minutes) to calm down. It didn’t have any long term impact on me at all, though.
Only one other occasion, a few years later, where I was stung twice by a wasp while I was playing golf.