

What Is the Best Home Remedy for a Bee Sting? 7 You could also try our bug bite sucker to remove the venom or saliva from below the surface of the skin.
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To apply topically, use a small amount of vinegar on a cotton ball and dab the area several times, before leaving on the skin for a few minutes. 6 What Is the Best Home Remedy for a Wasp Sting?įor a more natural wasp sting remedy, vinegar (as an acid) has been used to neutralize the alkalinity in wasp venom. And if you’re not current on your tetanus vaccine, your doctor may recommend a booster. Wash the area with soap and water, and treat pain with over-the-counter pain relievers and cold compresses. When dealing with wasps and carpenter bees, however, there is no stinger to be removed and this step can be skipped.
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Photo Credit: How to Treat Wasps and (Most) Bee Stings 4 Be sure the honey bee’s stinger is removed after a sting. This way, you are less likely to accidentally squeeze more venom from the sac of the bee into your skin. Rather than using tweezers or your fingers, use a blunt-edged object with a flat surface, such as a playing card or credit card to gently scrape the stinger off the surface of the skin. When treating a “traditional” (honey bee) bee sting, you must first remove the stinger from the skin, as the stinger may cause infection and allow the venom to continue being absorbed into your tissue. This is the first, and perhaps most important, difference. How to Treat a Honey Bee StingĪs we mentioned earlier, females of the honey bee species will leave a stinger inserted into the skin after their attack. However, there is one important detail to consider: the honey bee’s barbed stinger. The treatment of wasp stings and most bee stings is not so different on the surface. 3 Bumble bees are one of many types of bees that can sting multiple times without losing their stinger. Wasps have a sheath that slips over their stinger, allowing them to disengage it from the skin. Except for honey bees, which have a barbed stinger that they often leave behind in the skin, most bees (including carpenter bees and the generally docile bumble bee) and wasps (including hornets) can actually sting multiple times and do not lose their stinger. Photo Credit: <Īnother common trait, and one that is often misunderstood, is the number of times a bee or wasp can sting. 2 Yellow jackets have yellow markings on the front of the head and yellow banding around the abdomen. Wasps’ and bees’ stingers are actually egg-laying organs called ovipositors 1, so for all these creatures, the female alone is capable of inflicting that painful attack. No matter the species, both bees and wasps share one very important trait: only the females of each will sting, and generally only when provoked or defending a nest. What to Do for a Wasp Stingīefore we can talk about how to approach wasp sting treatment, it’s important to know the behaviors of two commonly misidentified stinging species – bees and wasps – so you can identify which insect may have stung you. bumble bees), the two species’ ability to sting, their venom and even the pain index of their stings can differ significantly. However, while bees and wasps may at first glance appear similar (read about how to identify different types of wasps and carpenter bees vs.

If you’ve ever been the victim of a surprise bee sting (or worse yet, a wasp sting), you know just how unpleasant the experience can be.
