Subject: Stings and Blindness

From: "T. Alex. Shaw. BA(Hons" <[email-masked]>
Date: 21 May 1995 21:31:37 +0100

I have kept bees for longer than I care to remember and on occassions 
become rather careless and forget to wear my viel.   I mentioned this to 
another experienced beekeeper recently and he said that a sting direct into 
the eye would cause permanent blindness and that I should always wear it.   
If this is so then, of course, he is right.   Does anyone know what the 
risks are in relation to this please? 

--

                                                                    Alex.

/*  What kind of person uses a language that gives a clean compile on:
    for(;P("\n"),R-;P("|"))for(e=C;e-:P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("|"+(*u/4)%2); */

---

From: [email-masked] (Andy Nachbaur)
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 05:00:00 GMT

<>From: "T. Alex. Shaw. BA(Hons" <[email-masked]>

<>I have kept bees for longer than I care to remember and on occassions
<>become rather careless and forget to wear my viel.   I mentioned this to
<>another experienced beekeeper recently and he said that a sting direct into
<>the eye would cause permanent blindness and that I should always wear it.
<>If this is so then, of course, he is right.   Does anyone know what the
<>risks are in relation to this please?

Hello Alex,

  It may be true only because I have never heard of anyone being
stung directly on the eye and living to tell the story.

  But I can tell you for sure that if that is true it is the only
place on your body or in it, that one well placed bee sting will kill
you if you are not super sensitive to honey bee stings. Speaking
>from  experience of course.

  What to do if a live honey bee gets in your ear?..

  This is not an everyday occurrence but it does happen once in a
lifetime. Maybe less today, but in yester year when bee hives were
loaded by hand at night they would at times become very crawly and would
crawl up and in time find a way in and sock it too you. If you are lucky
enough to have one crawl into your ear your will find that she will not
want to back out, and will drive you nuts with her buzzing, you knowing
all the time this is your last hour on earth when she give you that
death sting to your brain. It may be true that beekeeper's don't
use shot gun's in suicide attempts because the target is so small, but
one small bee seems to know the range. But not all is lost if you have
any kind of oil, including motor oil, and can get a few drops into
your ear canal and on the bee she will back out.

  Now I am not saying this is the best or approved method or will
work all the time, but I have seen it work twice, one time the oil was a
little warm on the beekeepers ear. But both times the little old dirty
bee was removed without stinging.

  A dirty ear full for sure, but no sting. The oil used in both these
cases was dirty motor oil dripped off the dip stick fresh from the truck.
It would be preferable to have some light mineral oil in the yard truck
First Aid kit, but sometime's one is not prepared for the adventure's of
the night.
                               ttul Andy-

(c)Wild Bee's BBS
Permission to reproduce, granted.
Opinion's are not necessarily facts.

---

From: Mark Dillow <[email-masked]>
Date: 22 May 1995 17:27:46 GMT

Alex, 
I have a friend who experienced a sting to the eye when one of 
her bees got under her veil. She experienced temporary 
blindness in that eye, which then spread to the other eye (I 
think this is called a sympathetic reaction). She was affected 
for a few days, but suffered no permanent damage.

However, I would think that permanent blindness would indeed be 
 possible for some people, depending on their indivdual 
reaction to the sting. I'm no expert, just guessing.

At any rate, I have always used a veil when working my bees, 
but at the above example shows, even a veil isn't always 100% 
effective. To me, it isn't worth the risk to work without the 
veil.

Mark

---

From: [email-masked] (Pollinator)
Date: 22 May 1995 23:34:07 -0400

<[email-masked]>

become rather careless and forget to wear my viel.   I mentioned this to 
another experienced beekeeper recently and he said that a sting direct
into 
the eye would cause permanent blindness and that I should always wear it. 

   I would suppose this would depend on the individual reaction.  If there
is enough reaction, scarring of the cornea could occur.

   I do not wear a veil, if I move bees at night, because crawling bees
are easier to get at without the veil, and they are not supposed to fly. 
However one didn't read the book and hit me tail first in the eyeball.  I
had a difficult time getting out the stinger, and I suppose I mashed most
of the venom out of the poison sac in the process.

   It gave me a whopper of a headache, and I took some Tylenol and
stretched out on the truck seat for an hour.  Then I was okay.  Of course
I get stung a lot.  

   (We opened one hive today that was a fireball!  The rest were just
beautiful.  You work thirty hives with no stings, the thirty first stings
you thirty times.  I had a new helper being broken in, and I thought I
might lose him on the first day.)

   There were no further reactions.

[email-masked]   Dave Green
[email-masked]                                   Dave Green
Dave's Pollination Service         Eastern Pollinator Newsletter
PO Box 1215, Hemingway, SC    29554

---

From: [email-masked] (Ronald Healy)
Date: 23 May 1995 05:15:07 GMT

>risks are in relation to this please? 

This is a good question, so I thought I would answer back to the newsgroup
instead of by e-mail.  I am a physician and have treated many stings, 
>from  both honeybees and wasps, but I have never treated any kind of sting
directly to the eye itself.  If anyone out there has, I would be interested
in your experiences.  

I think that a sting to the eyeball could be quite serious, but would probably
depend on which part of the eye was penetrated, and the extent to which the
person reacted.  The conjunctiva is the clear membrane over the white part
of the eye, and a sting there would probably only result in some pretty 
impressive swelling, but likely no permanent damage.  A sting to the cornea,
the clear part covering the pupil and iris, however could result in scarring,
which could certainly impair the person's vision if it was in the 
line of sight.  If the sting resulted in venom being injected into the 
area behind the cornea, which contains a clear fluid, then I believe 
permanent blindness could occur.  Any sort of resulting reaction 
would result in a cloudiness to the fluid, which could be permanent.  
I would say that a sting to the eye *could* result in blindness, but not 
necessarily.

Do I wear my veil?  You bet I do.  I always get a very large local reaction
with each sting, and it isn't pleasant when it is on my face.

Take care

Ron.

---

From: [email-masked] (Andy Nachbaur)
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 14:45:00 GMT

P<>   (We opened one hive today that was a fireball!  The rest were just
 <>beautiful.  You work thirty hives with no stings, the thirty first stings
 <>you thirty times.  I had a new helper being broken in, and I thought I
 <>might lose him on the first day.)

Hello Mr. Pollinator,

If you can keep from smiling when they run you should do all right with
that new help. I once had one that wanted to work real bad and in time
was a good helper. A week or so after he started I got a call from my
insurance agent, and it seemed the first time he got stung he got
frightened and went to a doctor because he did swell a little and
of course I got the bill or my workman's comp got the bill.

                        ttul Andy-

---

From: [email-masked] (Robert Inget)
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 22:15:04

In article <[email-masked]> "T. Alex. Shaw. BA(Hons" <[email-masked]> writes:
>Path: rainrgnews0!psgrain!news.sprintlink.net!demon!longton.demon.co.uk!alex
>From: "T. Alex. Shaw. BA(Hons" <[email-masked]>
>Newsgroups: sci.agriculture.beekeeping
>Subject: Stings and Blindness
>Date: 21 May 1995 21:31:37 +0100
>Organization: At home in the North Midlands, UK
>Lines: 18
>Sender: [email-masked]
>Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
>Reply-To: [email-masked]
>NNTP-Posting-Host: dispatch.demon.co.uk
>MMDF-Warning:  Parse error in original version of preceding line at
>post.demon.co.uk
>X-Newsreader: Newswin Alpha 0.7
>X-Posting-Host: longton.demon.co.uk

Naw it wont make ya blind, just mad as heck. Why I was stung in the right eye 
and I am not blind.  signed,  Lefty

---

From: [email-masked] (Terry Gosset)
Date: 27 May 1995 13:31:49 GMT

>and I am not blind.  signed,  Lefty

I have been stung at least three times in the eye. The only thing that happened to me is a bloody painful eye.
Terry

---

From: [email-masked] (Michael Moroney)
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 05:27:26 GMT

> risks are in relation to this please? 

I almost found out the hard way the answer.  I had one hive that was
particularly nasty, and while working it one day (to replace the queen
with a hopefully nicer one!) my veil wasn't on quite tight and a few
of the buggers managed to get in.  (talk about a bee in your bonnet!)
I couldn't take it off because with the cloud of nasties buzzing around
and crawling on me I'd probably wind up with more.  Some stung ears etc.,
some I killed by squishing in the veil before they got the chance (alarm
scent? My clothes were already covered in stingers!) but one went right for
my eye.  I saw it coming and closed the eye and it got me right on the eyelid.
It hurt like heck for a little while and swelled up quite a bit but I was
thanking my lucky stars it wasn't the eye itself.

-Mike

---

From: Jeff <[email-masked]>
Date: 1 Jun 1995 07:15:55 GMT

[email-masked] (Andy Nachbaur) wrote:
>loaded by hand at night they would at times become very crawly and 

I was unlucky enough to be stung in the ear once. I'm not usually 
worried by beestings much but this one time my ear swelled and I had a 
ringing in the ear for some time. The bee was pissed off I must admit. I 
was walking past some flowers just as the bee flew out. Both of us were 
rather surprised as the bee went straight in and the bee happened to 
react first.

Not something I recommend

Regards 
Jeff C.