Bee sting reaction10/12/2023 ![]() Cleanse the area with gentle soap and water and apply an ice pack. If you can, remove the stinger as soon as possible. Some swelling may extend outside of the sting site for example, if your child was stung on their wrist, the whole forearm could swell up. Normal bee sting reactionĪfter the initial pinch of a bee sting, your child may develop pain, redness, itchiness, and swelling around the site. Margaret Lubega of First Pediatric Care Center in Gastonia, North Carolina, suggests you take care of your child’s bee sting, plus her advice on when to seek medical care. A bee sting can be scary and slightly painful – but most parents can soothe their child and the site of the injury at home with no complications.Īccording to some experts, only about 3% of children experience an allergic reaction after being stung. For the honeybee, a sting is truly the last resort.You want your child to enjoy the great outdoors, but the tradeoff for time outside is exposure to bees and other biting or stinging insects. Usually, they are busy taking care of their family or moving pollen around which helps us produce everything from flowers to fruits to vegetables. If another honeybee picks up on the chemicals, it might also go into stinging mode.īut for the most part, bees don’t really want to sting you, Hopkins said. The pheromones set off a kind of alarm to let other honeybees nearby know what’s up. As Hopkins put it, it’s a kind of “self-operating stinging machine.”īefore they fly off and die, honeybees will also release some chemicals called pheromones into the air. But the stinger packet can keep on stinging. This causes so much damage to the bee that it can no longer live. All of these parts work together to help the honeybee defend itself.Īfter the honeybee flies away, it leaves behind this little packet of stinger, venom, and muscles in your skin. Meanwhile, the muscles help pump venom from the bee’s venom sack into the animal it wants to sting. A honeybee uses its muscles to slide those saw-like parts back and forth. It isn’t exactly like a needle, but rather a pair of saws that work side by side. Part of the reason for this has to do with the body parts the honeybee uses to sting. They don’t lose their stinger when they fly away. Wasps, bumblebees and yellow jackets can sting you multiple times. Hopkins reminded me honeybees, wasps, bumblebees and yellow jackets sting in different ways. The reaction from a bee sting in one person might be quite different from a reaction in another person. Of course, everyone’s body is a little different. ![]() Over time his body’s immune system has recognized the venom in his body isn’t really going to do any harm. But now when he gets stung it just looks like a little bug bite. When Hopkins was first working with honeybees and got stung, he would swell up and itch a lot. As the immune system responds to these invaders, you might experience some redness, itchiness, swelling or rarely, a severe allergic reaction. The body will detect unusual invaders, or the molecules in the bee venom. If you get a bee sting, it’s likely that your body’s immune system-which works to protect you-will kick into gear. Just as bees have a defense system that helps them survive in the world, humans have a defense system of their own. When I got your question, I called up my friend Brandon Hopkins, who works as a honeybee researcher at Washington State University. A few different things happen when a bee stings you, and a few things happen to the bee, too.
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