Monday, August 6, 2007

Stung in the face



One of the things I have learned in my first year of beekeeping is that I don't really mind getting stung by the girls...I have also learned that I have the very rare Type III allergic reaction to stings. Substantial swelling occurs on the 2nd, 3rd, day after the sting. The picture above is me, 36 hours after getting, stung between the eyes by a bee at a WCBA field day. While the picture below, is me 12 hours after the first picture was taken.

I don't really look like the same person. The swelling got so bad that it began pushing on my sinuses (inside), which cause my body to stimulate a panic attack (first I have EVER had) and I ended up getting an ambulance ride to the hospital...I was alone and passing out, so I felt that calling 911 was a good idea. I called my family 1st, but nobody was closer than 30 minutes away, so 911 got the 2nd call. By the time the ambulance got here (10 minutes later) the attack was passing. I had taken Benadryl about 5 minutes before I started passing out, so it was already in my system, and beginning to do its magic.



Yesterday I get stung in the face, again. The Italian queen I installed, in the last blog, began her egg laying 6 weeks ago and layed more eggs than most people found reasonable. In fact, when I told people that there were 7 frames of brood in the top chamber alone (I didn't check the bottom chamber) they were astonished..."Great queen" is what everyone said. 7 frames of brood is around 40,000 new bees. As they hatch, she lays a new egg in the empty cell and the cycle starts all over again.

3 weeks after laying an egg, the bee hatches as a nurse bee. 3 weeks after that, they begin to emerge from the hive and take their orientation flights around the bee yard before going out into the field to begin their work as pollen and nectar gathering machines. Well, imagine 2000-10,000 bees all taking their orientation flights at once. Its quite a sight. I walked up into the orchard to get a closer look. I was standing about 20 feet from the hive and one of them bumped into my face and stung me. Its going to happen with that level of activity. The bees were EVERYWHERE.

If my reaction follows similar patterns to the past 3 stings, it will swell tomorrow and the following day, and then begin to subside. I am tired from the Benadryl. Also, I have been a bit under the weather for the last 5 days, so I am wondering if my body may have a bit harder time fighting the bee venom than usual. I will post the follow-up in a few days to document the extent of swelling.

There are two factors that MIGHT reduce the amount of swelling I get from this particular sting. 1st, stings tend to swell less and less as you get stung more often. 2nd, when I went to the hospital they told me to take Zantac to aide in reducing the swelling. I guess the stomach medication (Ranitidine) has an anti-histamine affect similar to that of Benadryl. If these two factors combine, I may not look like a monster by tomorrow night. If they don't work, I will just have to get used to looking like this from time to time.
***UPDATE*** There was no additional swelling from the sting. My body is getting used to the stings, or the Zantac is a miracle antihistamine. Either way, hooray.

On a more positive note, the last time I checked the hives (12 days ago) I had one full honey super filled with honey on the Russian hive. That's 40 lbs of honey. I added an additional super onto that hive, and also added the first honey super onto the Italian hive. That is pretty good for a first year hive. This has been a good year for honey production, in general.