The  following  was  taken  from  _The_Lancet_,  which  is a
 medical    journal    on    the    internet    fount     at:
 http://www.thelancet.com
 
    REMOVING BEE STINGS: SPEED MATTERS, METHOD DOESN'T (pp
                           301-02)
 
 If you are stung by a bee, get the sting out of your skin as
 quickly  as  possible, no matter how.  That is the practical
 message reached by two Californian scientists  who  describe
 stinging  themselves with bees in the interest of science in
 The Lancet this week.
 
 Kirk Visscher and Richard Vetter, who study insects  at  the
 University  of California, Riverside, questioned whether the
 conventional advice to scrape the sting  apparatus  out  the
 skin,  perhaps  with a knife blade or credit card, is sound.
 Or, they postulated, should you pinch  the  sting  out  with
 fingers  or forceps? "Volunteers me and me" was the order of
 the day.
 
 With a lucky (or wise)  medical  colleague,  Scott  Camazine
 from   Pennsylvania  State  University,  as  observer  only,
 Visscher  and  Vetter  drew  up  their  shirt  sleeves   and
 "collected  a  worker  honey  bee as she flew from her hive,
 grasped her by the wings, and pressed her against the  skin"
 until   they  were  stung,  twenty  times  in  all  in  each
 volunteer.   Two seconds later,  the  stingers  scraped  the
 sting  off  with  a credit card or pinched it out with their
 thumb and forefinger.   Camazine measured the  size  of  the
 wealts  that  appeared  ten  minutes  later.    There was no
 difference in  the  size  of  the  weal  after  scraping  or
 pinching: means of 80 and 74 mm2, respectively.
 
 Visscher  did  other  self-experiments, involving a total of
 fifty forearm stings.   The sting was left  in  for  between
 half and eight seconds, and Camazine measured the wealts ten
 minutes  later.  The mean weal size increased the longer the
 sting was left in, from just over 60 to about 82 mm2,  which
 is why fast removal is a good idea.
 
 Bee stings are painful and sometimes fatal.  About 17 people
 die  each  year  in the USA after being stung by bees.  When
 the honey bee stings, the sting embeds  in  the  skin  along
 with a venom sac, a nerve cell, some muscles, and the end of
 the  bee's  abdomen.   Barbs on the sting itself work deeper
 into the flesh as the muscles contract.    The  contractions
 also  pump  venom  from the sac via a valve and piston.  The
 longer the sting is in, the more venom is released.    Hence
 the  advice  from  the  researchers  to get the sting out as
 quickly as possible.
 
 Bees also release an alarm chemical  when  they  sting  that
 attracts other bees to come and sting you.  If you are stung
 by   an   Africanized  bee  (a  cross-breed  noted  for  its
 aggression, and sweeping northward  in  the  Americas),  the
 researchers  modify  their advice.  Run away fast, they say,
 before worrying about removing any stings.