Wendy Platt said:

I have a friend who is spouting knowledge that I feel is incorrect.  I am
hoping
that someone on the list can help me to prove it.

There has been a number of contributions, and thought I'd like to throw my
bit in as well.  Different people react to things differently and there is
no clear cut conclusion.

I started beekeeping 20 years ago and bought a few hives from a chap (Vic
Lund) who died as a result of liver cancer.  The liver giving up due to the
lifelong detoxification it had to put up with over the years from excessive
bee stings.
At this same time I would swell quite substantially from the stings I
received.  Eventually I learned how to handle bees without being stung, but
by this time I had acquired a fair bit of immunity.  My real break came four
years later when I attended a beekeeping course held by the Rev. Dante
Anderson.  He showed us how to work calmly and gently with our defensive
African bees. He never wore protective clothing and alarmed most people.
Nevertheless he was frequently stung but it never bothered him.  One day he
was working on bees down a hole and fell in.  He was severally stung and
lost conscious.  He eventually woke up and returned home a bit groggy.  His
wife then removed in excess of 200 stings. Dante eventually died a few years
later, not from a reaction of a single sting but liver cancer.  When I
visited him in hospital, he told me that his liver could no longer deal with
the venom.
I have received up to 50 stings within one incident and never swelled or
felt anxious.  I have noticed that I react differently every time I get
stung.
My son had been helping me for a couple of years and regularly received bee
stings.  Then one day he was fishing dead bees out of the swimming pool and
burying them.  Unfortunately one dead bee stung him and he went into
anaphylactic shock  Within fifteen minutes he was not breathing. My wife
carried him into the doctors rooms thinking he was not going to make it.
After an hour of adrenalin and courtesan being slowly injected, he pulled
through.  We sent him on a desensitisation course and he remained on it for
a few years before we took him off.  The doctor seemed to think that he
would never become desensitised but he did became asthmatic as a result of
the treatment.
A few years ago he was accidentally stung by a bee at a holiday cottage
hundreds of kilometres away from a doctor.  He never reacted except for a
localised swelling.  Since then he has worked with me in the apiary, hands
bare and receives a sting every now and then with no consequences.
I mentioned that I react differently: I found that since I work gently with
bees I seldom get stung and I normally try to have a sting once every six
weeks. If I don't get stung once a month, the next sting always produces
swelling. Last year I went without a sting for 10 weeks until I got stung on
the ankle.  The next day my ankle became so painful that I couldn't walk on
it.  The next morning however the foot was back to normal as if nothing had
happened.  Two weeks later I again was stung on the ankle by a number of
bees, and I was in a situation where I wasn't able to remove the stings.
Once I took my socks off there were some dark bloody spots where the stings
had gained entry, but I never had any swelling nor pain.

Hope my contribution adds fuel to your defence

Eddy Lear
South Africa