Stinger

“ The next time we may [121] hear from you, you may be sitting in a corner crying, because the sting got into your nose a little below the tip, and it is hurting you in a way that a sting never troubled you before.
The mission of The Stinger is to reform the bee-keeping world. (Did I hear you say that that is impossible, dear reader?) There is no man in the world that needs reforming more than the Rambler, and so his threats to expose me if I do not cease troubling him, fall upon me as uselessly as if he had never uttered them. For shame, on you, Rambler! ”

“ As, however, the comparative degree is in this case to be avoided with the utmost care, I repeat the advice given in the earlier portion of this narrative, and earnestly counsel the reader to look out carefully for the stinger, and, above all things, never to swim across its track, no matter how distant the animal may be, for the creature can cast forth its envenomed filaments to an almost interminable length, and even when separated from the parent body, each filament, or each fragment thereof, will sting just as fiercely as if still attached to the creature whence it issued. ”

“ If the bather, or shore wanderer, should happen to see, either tossing on the waves, or thrown upon the beach, a loose, roundish mass of tawny membranes and fibres, something like a very large handful of lion’s mane and silver paper, let him beware of the object, and sacrificing curiosity to discretion, give it as wide a berth as possible. For this is the fearful stinger, scientifically called Cyanea capillata, the most plentiful and most redoubtable of our venomous Medusæ. ”

“ Bunker, “and even you, not knowing anything about [Pg 110] bees, could easily pick her out of hundreds of others. The drones are a little larger than the workers, and the queer thing about the drones is that they never sting. They have no stings and cannot harm you. The queen can sting, but she never does, or hardly ever; for once a bee stings, it leaves the stinger in a person or an animal, and that means the bee dies. And it wouldn’t do to have the queen bee die.”
“What would happen if she should die?” asked Russ. ”

“ We cannot make hard and fast definitions which will determine exactly what belongs to this group and what to that; there are always some intermediate forms which present themselves and make our classification unsatisfactory, but, I think, for all purposes of practical observation in the field we may say that if we find a creature with four membranous wings, burrowing in the ground or making a nest in any way, it is an aculeate or stinger. Also, that if we find a hairy-bodied insect with four clear wings collecting pollen or sucking nectar from a flower it is a bee. ”

“ Every viper has 7,000 tails and on every tail 7,000 stingers, and every stinger contains 7,000 kinds of poison. The common drink of the inmates of hell is poison drunk from iron cups. Their meals will be the flesh of animals and even their own flesh. ”

“ Wasp stingers do not become detached, and a single wasp can sting a victim several times before retreating. Social wasps are particularly 26 dangerous because a disturbance of their nest may result in attack by numerous wasps. ”

“ At these times a species of sting-ray is common on the sloping beach, and bathers are frequently stung most severely by it. The weapon of this fish is a strong blade with jagged edges, about three inches long, growing from the side of the long fleshy tail. I once saw a woman wounded by it whilst bathing; she shrieked frightfully, and was obliged to be carried to her hammock, where she lay for a week in great pain; I have known strong men to be lamed for many months by the stingy. ”

“ The sting, I am told, is directed at one point rather than another because that is the only vulnerable point. The insect cannot choose what wound it will inflict; it stings where it must. Its wonderful operative method is the necessary result of the victim's structure. Let us first, if we attach any importance to lucidity, come to an understanding about the word "vulnerable." Do you mean by this that the point or rather points wounded by the sting are the only points at which a lesion will suddenly cause either death or paralysis? ”

“ How very frightened every one is of the sting of a bee, and those people who have never been stung are perhaps the most frightened of all. After all, the sting is not so painful, and it is very interesting to watch the angry little worker drive its sharp weapon into our hand; besides which it is actually good for us to be stung, and the reason of this I shall presently tell you. The sting is situated at the very tip of the abdomen. ”

“ Probably the most poisonous creature in the collection is a variety of sting ray, weighing about 200 pounds, which was speared at the bottom of 20 feet of water. This animal, like all stingarees, has a tail armed with long, poisonous barbs. The venom could be lethal to a man. ”

“ Other Stinging Forms—Of the five thousand, or more, species of bees, most possess a sting and poison apparatus and some of the larger forms are capable of inflicting a much more painful sting than that of the common honey-bee. In fact, some, like the bumble bees, possess the advantage that they do not lose the sting from once using it, but are capable of driving it in repeatedly. In the tropics there are found many species of stingless bees but these are noted for their united efforts to drive away intruders by biting. ”

“ When actually stung, the first thing to be done is to extract the weapon, which the unfortunate insect almost invariably tears out of its body, with the poison-bag and muscles, as it flies off. If left in the flesh, the muscles, by their automatic action, drive the barbs in deeper and deeper, the poison also flowing more copiously into the wound. Directly the sting is removed, avoid all rubbing of the part affected, but at once press upon the puncture a hollow key, taking care that the exact spot pierced comes in the centre of the opening of the key-tube. ”

“ Grasping her prey with her legs and jaws, in another moment the wriggling body is passive in her grasp, subdued by the potent anæsthetic of her sting—a hypodermic injection which instantly produces the semblance of death in its insect victim, reducing all the vital functions to the point of dissolution, and then holds them suspended—literally prolongs life, it would sometimes seem, even beyond its normal duration—by a process which I might call ductile equation. ”

“ In its haste to fly away after stinging, the bee does not always succeed, on account of these teeth, in drawing out the sting from the wound it has inflicted; and thus the sting is wrenched from the bee’s body, to the endangering of the insect’s life. The venom-sac is left behind also; it is that little white globule one sees outside the wound and at the base of the sting. If the person stung, hastening to extract the sting, is awkward enough to press on the little sac, a great part of the venom is likely to [348] be injected into the wound, with a corresponding increase of pain. ”

“ The love of knowledge in matters of natural history is not without its cruelties. To make absolutely certain of the point attained by the sting, and to inform myself completely concerning this horrible talent for murder, I have provoked I dare not confess how many assassinations in captivity. Without a single exception, the bee has always been stung in the throat. In the preparations for the final blow the extremity of the abdomen may of course touch here and there, at different points of the thorax or abdomen, but it never remains there, nor is the sting unsheathed, as may easily be seen. ”

“ We know how furiously Hymenoptera armed with a sting used only for defence rush at the bold man who disturbs their nest, and punish his temerity. Those on the contrary whose sting is used only for hunting are very pacific, as if they guessed how important for their family is the little poison drop in their vase. That droplet is the safeguard of their race—I might really say their means of subsistence; therefore they use it economically, in the serious business of the chase, with no parade of vengeful courage. ”

“ Every worker is armed with a formidable sting, and when provoked, makes instant and effectual use of her natural weapon. The sting, when subjected to microscopic examination, exhibits a very curious and complicated mechanism. "It is moved [6] by muscles which, though invisible to the eye, are yet strong enough to force the sting, to the depth of one twelfth of an inch, through the thick skin of a man's hand. ”

“ If a person receives a great number of stings, a physician should be summoned at once. The victim should be undressed, put in bed, and all of the sting scraped out. All parts of the body that have received stings should be covered with cloths soaked in hot water and wrung out. These applications should be as hot as the victim can endure.
Persons who are supersensitive to bee-sting venom show the following symptoms when stung: the skin over the entire body breaks out in lumpy welts, palms of the hands and soles of the feet itch. ”

“ There are some persons, for example, who care no more for the sting of a bee than for the prick of a needle, and there are those whom a single bee-sting will bring almost to the gates of death. So with the tentacles of the Stinging Jelly-fish and those of the Portuguese Man-of-war, and there are persons who are scarcely affected with the sting of the scorpion. ”

“ What's shaped like a sting ray and flies over Chesapeake Bay? This is the eerie riddle which confronts Rick Brant and his friend Don Scott when, seeking shelter from a storm, they anchor the houseboat Spindrift in a lonely cove along the Maryland shore and spot the flying stingaree.
The "thing," they learn, is not the only one of its kind—one is actually suspected of having kidnaped a man!
The residents of the Eastern Shore of Maryland believe the strange objects are flying saucers, but, weary of ridicule, have ceased reporting the sightings. ”

“ To generalize and say that death is always near at hand when the sting is administered in the thoracic ganglia would be going too far: it occurs frequently, but there are a good many exceptions, resulting from circumstances impossible to define. I cannot control the direction of the sting, the depth attained, the quantity of poison shed; and the stump of the Bee is very far from making up for my shortcomings. We have here not the cunning sword-play of the predatory insect, but a casual blow, ill-placed and ill-regulated. Any accident is possible, therefore, from the gravest to the mildest. ”

“ People often talk about a gnat stinging or a stinging fly; it may be difficult to define exactly what "to sting" means, but the writer has always considered that a sting is inflicted by the tail end of the creature or a {3}bite by the mouth. A fly or gnat no doubt inserts its proboscis into one's flesh just as a wasp does its sting ”

“ I have met with individuals, upon whom a sting produced the singular effect of causing their breath to smell like the venom of the enraged insect! The smell of the poison resembles almost perfectly that of a ripe banana. It produces a very irritating effect upon the bees themselves; for if a minute drop of it is extended to them, on a stick, they at once manifest the most decided anger. ”

“ It has eight legs, and a pair of claws like a lobster, the body is lengthened into a sort of tail, at the end of which is a claw or sting, like the poison fang of a serpent, with a poison bag at its root; its effects are often fatal to man, and always so to the insects and other small animals upon which the Scorpion feeds, its usual mode of killing which, is to catch them with its claws and then to sting them to death. ”

“ The last important organ of the abdomen is the sting. This small but effective weapon is situate close to the stomach, and is found in the queen and worker, but is absent in the drone. Our engraving (Plate II. Fig. 4) exhibits the sting of the worker bee with its muscles and attachments: r shows the muscles that move the sting, and q the curved base of the outer sheath by which it is enclosed. Much beautiful mechanism is observed on a microscopic examination of this weapon, so wonderfully powerful in comparison with its bulk. ”

“ In this country we have a number of insects, the sting of which is sometimes attended with considerable pain and swelling, or even high inflammatory excitement. Of these, the most common are the bee, wasp, hornet, yellow-jacket, and humble-bee, which all secrete a subtle poison contained in a reservoir in the abdomen, from which it is projected by the barbed dart when in the act of stinging. Severe and even dangerous wounds are occasionally thus inflicted; indeed, in a few instances death has been known to follow, especially in persons of a nervous, irritable temperament. ”

“ It is better to protect the face and hands from their attacks as you will thus feel greater confidence in yourself, and can perform all operations without fear of stings. It is well to understand what will arouse the anger of bees and cause them to sting. If we breathe upon them, when they are in and about the hive or boxes they deem it an insult, and will dash at and sting us at once. Any sudden jar of the hive is instantly resented. All quick, spiteful motions about the hive, such as running, jumping, etc., are noticed, and quite sure to be followed by a sting. ”

“ As soon as one is stung apply a little of the tincture to the sting, when the pain and swelling cease. It will also serve well for bites of spiders and poisonous reptiles. If an onion be scraped and the juicy part applied to the sting of wasps or bees the pain will be relieved quickly. Ammonia applied to a bite from a poisonous snake, or any poisonous animal, or sting of an insect, will give immediate relief and will go far toward completely curing the injury. It is one of the most convenient caustics to apply to the bite of a mad dog. ”