Stinger Wisdom Revisited

All the good advice we’ve been giving you about the right way to deal with bee stings – may no longer be valid. This is Dr. Steven Andrew Davis, Speaking of Health. A report published in the medical journal The Lancet appears to scrape away current dogma about scraping out bee stingers instead of squeezing them and pulling them out.

At the root of all this is the attachment of a bee’s stinger to its guts. You know – when the bee’s barb is stuck in the victim and the bee pulls away, its guts stay with the stinger, meaning that the bee will soon die. But the stinger is still pumping venom into the victim, hence the traditional caution against squeezing the stinger when pulling it out for fear you’ll squeeze more venom into the wound.

Not so, according to these researchers, who, by the way, used themselves as sting victims for their study. They note there’s a type of valve and piston action on the stingers which pump venom into the victim under different removal methods, there was no difference. What did matter, though, was how quickly the stinger was removed. The moral of the story: get that stinger out quickly, regardless of technique, because even slight delays in removal are likely to increase the dose of venom received. Now contemplate that the next time you’re stung by a bee – if you can! For a copy of this script, access our web site, speakingofhealth.com. Speaking of Health, I’m Dr. Steven Andrew Davis for CBS News.