[music]
So we are going to talk about getting stung.
It's part of bee keeping.
Every bee keeper gets stung from time to time
and I'd just like to talk a little bit about
what a normal reaction is, how to deal with the stings
and a little bit about how we
become accustomed to stings over time.
So when a bee stings it does so
to defend its hive.
They're extremely good at defending their hives if
they become agitated.
So the bee flies out and it goes
generally to something that is moving,
so if your hands are moving quickly
or if your legs are walking by a hive,
it'll be going towards those moving parts.
They see dark, shiny things especially well,
so they'll see that movement,
for example your eyes are dark and
shiny and moving, so that's why bee
keepers typically wear a veil it protects their
eyes because bees do zero in on things
like your eyes and nostrils and so on.
I don't like to wear a lot of protective
equipment and it's actually a good thing
as a bee keeper to be getting stung on a
fairly regular basis.
If you are getting stung more than the average
person but less than a full-time bee keeper
you are actually at the highest risk of developing
an allergy.
So we recommend that people get stung on a
on a fairly regular basis and just get used to it.
So to demonstrate how a bee sting works
we'll pick up a bee here by both wings and
her abdomen the stinger is right at the
tip of the abdomen.
It's enclosed within her abdomen right
now but when she wants to use it she
can protrude that sting, which she will do
right now and then the sting is loosely
attached to the bee, so the bee leaves
that sting behind.
What you can see at the surface is the
venom sack and it's pumping venom
in right now through the venom shaft,
so what we want to do is we want to
scrape that stinger off
and do that as quickly as possible.
The sooner you do it the less painful
the sting is.
What some bee keepers then do is puff smoke
where the sting is because that sting
leaves behind a pheromone that
attracts other bees to sting in that area.
So if we puff smoke on there it masks the
smell of that sting pheromone.
The pain lasts about a minute.
It goes away pretty quickly, so you know
you can get through a minute of it
and I encourage people to just get on with
doing some other work so that they are not
thinking about the sting and it's over time you
get the development of these little red
marks here where there is a white wheel around
that and then there may be some swelling
in that location the following day.
Typically, bee keepers when they first
working with bees will swell up quite a bit.
It may be your whole hand swells up with
a sting, but the response is variable
from person to person.
Over time your body becomes adjusted to
the venom and you respond less,
but usually for the first two or three
years in the spring it will swell up a
little bit more and then once you've
gone through that you rarely swell at all.
But again, scraping that stinger out
quickly does minimize the pain
so everybody wants to do that.