I did a search to find information about leaving a stinger in for time a time period and found this. Interesting the study shows that scraping it out is not the best method because of time delay. http://bees.ucr.edu/stings.html It doesn't state a length of time but does state that the longer it is in the more venom you will get. I usually wait until I see the venom sac stop pumping and then pull it out, five minutes at the longest and some times I let the stinger fall out on it's own. If I am working bees and not appreciating the stings I just pull the stinger out, never have taken the time to scrape. Karen Kimball *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm