Ted Wout wrote:
 
> And now for my question, how many bee stings is lethal?  I know that one
> bee sting can kill someone who is allergic.  I'm not allergic, I suffer bee
 
Hi Ted -
 
Thanks for sharing your interesting story. I had a couple of interesting experiences
myself this week along the same line. Friday, I got done with work early in the afternoon.
I left the job site at 1:00 and went home. When I walked in the house, My oldest and
youngest daughters were there but no wife and 7 year old son. When I asked for their
where-a-bouts, I was told that they were at the hospital. Not the kind of words a
father likes to hear! My daughter told me that my son had been stung on the foot and
had an allergic reaction.
 
I quickly changed and went to the hospital. When I got there, my son was sleeping and
looked pretty good. He was hooked up to an IV and heart monitor. It turns out that it
only took about 15 minutes for the allergic reaction to get to the serious stage. He had
hives over half his body, skin was bright red, eyes and mouth were swollen and he itched
all over. He has been stung by our honey bees several times before without much of a
reaction. I guess this time it put him over the top.
 
We now have two EpiPens on hand (one for here at the house and one to be with my
son when away from the house) and I was told by the doctor that the next sting will
more than likely have a worse reaction to him. I am now having to rethink my beekeeping
situation. I would be interested to know if anybody on the list has had a similer
experience to my son's and how have you coped with the allergy. Can one who has
developed an allergy to bee stings become desensitized? Has anyone experienced this?
 
As if this wasn't enough for one day, No sooner had we gotten home from the hospital
when the power went out. We suddenly had one doozy of a storm upon us. I'm seeing
rain and debris doing the horizontal thing so we all headed down to the basement. It
turns out that a tornado hit down about a mile from us. Took on lady for a ride in her
car up and 360 degrees around. She's fine. Anyway, I had two large limbs come down
out back and both hit a hive. One fell over the 12,000 volt line and over the top of a
hive and the other knocked over my biggest hive that has seven supers on it.
 
The storm had let up a bit so I grabbed my suit and went to right the hive. Needless to
say, they were a bit testy. Fortunately, they had the supers well stuck with propolis so
everything was still pretty much together. I was only able to remove one super at a time
and then back off for awhile as they would swell up out of the hive and give me a going
over. I found out that a suit doesn't work as well when it's totally wet! Sticks to your
skin so those stingers don't have far to travel. Finally got them back up on the stand
and the cover on before the next round of hard rain came. I still can't believe that a fall
like that only resulted in four combs pulling partially away from their frame. Poked them
back in with the hive tool enough to be able to put them back in place. Still don't know
if I have a living queen or not.
 
The other hive had to wait for Edison to come by and turn the line off so the tree crew
could bring it down. No damage to the hive. If you want to see grown men become real
apprehensive and fearsome, make them have to work around a hive with bees flying
everywhere. It was a good educational time for these men and I gave them all a bear of
honey to which they were all pleased to get! I even had one of the Edison guys ask to
see inside a hive. I decided my four frame nuc in a different location would be best at
that time. He was really excited to see the comb with bees and had all kinds of
questions.
 
Goodness, I'm starting to write like Andy! ;>)
 
Regards
 
-Barry
 
--
Barry Birkey
West Chicago, Illinois  USA
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http://www.birkey.com