Hello Eric,
I have been keeping bees since 1962. I have been stung thousands of times.
I now keep bees primarily for the use of their stings in therapy for
arthritis and Multiple Sclerosis. I am immune to the swelling effects of
bee stings, because of my frequent use of them on myself. Folks who don't
get stung very often should have a greater reaction to high numbers of
stings, in my experience. The best protection to have around bees is
immunity. I don't know if your friend has been stung enough to obtain
immunity, but if he has always avoided getting stung, he could be at risk in
a bad situation. I have been stung about 200 times in a 2 hour period
before and lost feeling in my legs. I didn't experience any other symptoms,
however, I had a well developed immunity and the next day, everything was
normal. About 2 years ago, I had a hive "turn on me" during a sudden
weather change and I got dozens of stings, with no ill effects.
I have a close friend I am providing stings for, because he has MS. We
started out slowly with a few stings several days apart and worked up his
immunity in about 6 weeks. He has had as many as 65 stings in one session,
with no ill effects. We usually take 15 - 20 stings per session 2 times per
week now.
In all the years I have kept bees, I have only had maybe a half dozen
instances of high sting numbers and I have never had any ill effects. In
the 70's I went years without keeping bees. An opportunity came up to obtain
some bees and I had a bad round of stings the very first day, while moving
the bees, because the hive turned over in the trailer and I had to put it
back together. I must have been stung 50 times that day and I still had my
immunity from years prior! I had no real swelling. I highly recommend
anyone keeping bees to get enough stings to obtain immunity and it should be
a good health insurance policy during and after the rare bad instance, such
as your friend has experienced. Most of my beekeeping friends can tell a
similar beekeeping war story, but they are still keeping bees. Seem's
everybody gets ate up on occasion. I hope this help out a bit.
Robert J. Bassett
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and other info ---
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