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Bee Stings suck

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kickftw

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Soo, there I was, riding along the 35 frontage road at 55 mph, when all of a sudden my nose hurts like ****, and I feel something bouncing around in my full face helmet. Yelled some obscenities, and pulled over. Luckily he's dead, and I'm not.

So, story time over... I'm a new rider... how often should I expect this?
 
19 years and only two bee encounters for me. Once a bee got in my helmet and I nearly crashed trying to get pulled over quick enough. Second, construction opened up a swarm of angry bees when they destroyed the hidden hive. I might have run a few red lights trying to get out of the area. Ended up with one hitchhiker who stung me, but all things considered, not too bad.
 
Hah, so, 2 months in, I get that out of the way, I'm good for another 15 years at least then!
 
well, in one year I have had two bees get a hold of me while riding.

One caught me between goggles and lower chin guard.
The other got me on the neck, right below chin guard, and as it went down jacket, left a streak of welts.
 
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Had one get in my helmet in Colorado but thank God he did not bite me. Thought it was a bug or fly stopped for Tim to take a picture and took off the helmet and realized it was a bee.:eek2:
 
Had one in my jacket sleeve on a Pie Run. Stung me when we stopped and then flew away. It hurt, but no big deal.
 
150K miles and once I've been stung. Little guy somehow got inside my jacket and tagged my shoulder blade once. Then there was this time I had one get in my helmet and I flipped up the visor then smashed him when he was on the cheek pad. Kind of hard to ride cross-eyed one-handed.
 
Did you put honey on your nose? 30 years of riding and never been stung!! Guess I better watch out as I seem due for mine!! :rofl:

Gary
 
El Fenix said:
Had one in my jacket sleeve on a Pie Run. Stung me when we stopped and then flew away. It hurt, but no big deal.
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Thanks for the confirmation of my choice to use gloves with gauntlets over the sleeve. Sucks when it's raining but I've never been stung up the sleeve of my jacket. :D
 
DOes getting mobbed by killer bees when riding the lawn tractor count? The little buggers chased me to the pool then hung out waiting for me to surface and went after any warm blooded being within 50 feet.
 
DaveC said:
DOes getting mobbed by killer bees when riding the lawn tractor count? The little buggers chased me to the pool then hung out waiting for me to surface and went after any warm blooded being within 50 feet.
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If it was over 50cc, yes.
 
Not on a bike, but a bicycle. I was riding my MTB in the mountains of WV one year. I came across an old gate and leaned my bike against it to catch a break from all the uphill pedaling. My helmet was on.

On the other side of the gate, there was a nest and they all come out flying out at me. about 8 of them get into the helmet vents (lots of them on a bicycle helmet) and sting my head.

I ended up cursing up a storm while yanking my helmet off and running around ape-*****. Walked away with a total of like 12 stings.
 
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One bee sting in 45 years of riding. About 50 last weekend but only a few go through the suit... I'm a bee keeper and we have a hot colony that won't quit burr combing and cross combing.

Frankly, grasshoppers are a bigger nuisance than anything in my experience. A random hit from a honey bee is really hard to imagine unless the rider is in a flowering field.
 
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you have not lived till you have taken a large armored flying beetle to the adams apple at 70+mph
 
yellow-jacket inside the full-face helmet at highway speed. Not fun.
 
:tab As a teenager I helped my Dad maintain 13 hives. Getting stung was pretty much a regular occurrence. Amazingly, I have never been zapped while I was in control of the bike. As a young kid, maybe 7 or 8, Dad had me on the back of his CB 450 and we were taking back roads into Fort Hood to get hair cuts. It was my first taste of dual sporting... Anyway, a bee landed on his arm. He flicked it off and it landed on my arm where it promptly stung me. That was the first time I'd been stung and I was screaming until he pulled over :lol2:

:tab Some years back, I was riding out on Casa Piedra Rd., near Presidio. We were hauling down the road at a good clip and it was a beautiful spring day. I crested a hill and was suddenly engulfed in a swarm of honey bees. They splattered all over the bike and were crawling all over me, inside and outside the helmet. Because of my earlier experience with bees I was able to NOT freak out and got the bike over to the side of the road where I carefully removed my helmet and started the process of getting all the bees off me and the bike. There have been a few other times where something came flying into my helmet and crawled around on my face until I could get it out. When the desert is in bloom, bee hives are trucked out there and set up in these clearings along the road side. I am talking about enough hives to fill an 18 wheeler trailer!

:tab The worse experience was an ant. Yes, an ant. I had set my helmet on the ground and did not realize a few ants had found their way into it. As I was going down the road, I felt something IN MY EAR!! That's right, somehow the ant managed to get past my ear plug and into my ear... I could not get pulled over fast enough! It took some work, but I managed to get it out. That was FAR worse than any flying critter that has ever got inside my helmet :huh2:
 
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Only happened to me once so far; about 7 years ago. I was riding in a residential area and a hornet(or yellow jacket) hit my shield about mid-way and slid or crawled to the bottom where it got through a crack between the shield and the helmet. I saw all this happening, lol. It stung me 2 or 3 times on the lip. I was able to get the bike (Kawasaki 900 cruiser) to the next stop sign where I promptly got off and let it fall over while frantically trying to get the helmet off. Seeing the bike laying in the road and a guy rubbing his lip and cursing, two different van driving moms stopped to ask me if I was OK. They were relieved when I told them what happened. Funny to think of that now, but man my lip was numb for a couple days. Nowadays I try not to leave my shield cracked open for long, especially while moving.
 
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This isn't a riding story, but a bee sting story....

When I got burned out on ATC, and wanted to move back to east Texas, I decided I'd go work in the oilfield, on a drilling rig until my old spot at the control tower in Tyler opened up.

Working on a drilling rig is exactly what you think... Tough.

I'm not afraid of heights, but am definitely scared of the sudden stop after I fall.

I had to climb up way high in the derrick, and walk across a piece of 10" I beam to the other leg to get a cable back in a sheive.

On the climbing belt I had on, there are 2-lanyards with big caribeaners. The idea is you hook one to something, climb, and hook the other on to something, go back, unhook the first one, and continue. This way you are always, 100% 'tied off'

I was halfway across this i-beam of terror when I felt an insect land on the back of my neck... He or she then proceeded to go down the back of my shirt. When I walked back out onto the middle of the i-beam to retrieve the first lanyard, the ******* stung me...

I lied, I'm afraid of two things... Heights and bees. I got to the other side, as suave as possible to avoid further stings. I smashed him between my back, and the leg of the Derrick. I didn't realize at the time that a bee can really only sting you once, but I also didn't know it was a bee at the time. Could've been a wasp or ground hornet.

This was the most terrifying, adrenaline pumped thing ive ever experienced.

The beam I was walking across is perpendicular from the point of reference is this photo. It spans about 20' across, and there is nothing to hold onto once you're in the middle.

IMG_20160413_155829_zpswt1h46go.jpg
 
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One bee-helmet encounter ever. Fortunately, it didn't zap me. So, to paraphrase Robin Williams, you're predisastered now.
 
camper said:
Not on a bike, but a bicycle. I was riding my MTB in the mountains of WV one year. I came across an old gate and leaned my bike against it to catch a break from all the uphill pedaling. My helmet was on.

On the other side of the gate, there was a nest and they all come out flying out at me. about 8 of them get into the helmet vents (lots of them on a bicycle helmet) and sting my head.

I ended up cursing up a storm while yanking my helmet off and running around ape-*****. Walked away with a total of like 12 stings.
Click to expand...

If the were yellow and black , they are referred to as yellow jackets here, meat bees in the East. They hurt and they like stinging more than once.
 
BTW Killer Bees, I have never had a wasp sting hurt like these did, I swell up at each site and they hurt for days, not a little hurt but the entire swollen area. Not a thing I would care to repeat!
 
Yea, the whole paper wasp, yellow jacket, honey bee and Africanized bee -aka killer bee - thing gets mixed up. The thin yellow and black wasps with a big paper nest under an eve, light fixture, in a horizontal pipe, etc. are paper wasps, but I grew up hearing them called yellow jackets.

Real yellow jackets live in fallen tree trunks or in nests in the ground. They look a lot like honey bees to the average person. These things are very, very aggressive. I once set a chainsaw down on a yellow jacket nest and was attacked. My clothes, especially my jeans and boots took the brunt of the attack, but I had 19 stings that made it home. Very, very painful. My wife was sweeping them off my legs with a broom and they would simply fly back to attack again. They ignored her because I had the pheromone on my trousers.

Africanized bees are just European honey bees with some African bee genetics. They look the same, sting the same, live in generally in the same places: old trees, power boxes, walls and sometime in the ground. They do have a stronger defense behavior and will attack more quickly and in larger numbers. European honey bees can tolerate several minutes of working with the nest before they start to get defensive, and then it is just a few bees at first. Of course, someone knocks over the hollow tree they are nesting in with a tractor and all bets are off. Colonies that are consistently worked by a bee keeper may get "hot" over time and become more aggressive. Just don't swat.
m
 
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Bees and Wasps! I understand what the guy on the Drilling rigs said. Wasps are attracted to the grease on rigs. Especally land rigs. 14 years as a rig mechanic learned me that.
On motorcycles, several, up the sleeve, on the chest or arm from direct hits. Last year put me in a ventilated jacket even in the hot summer time. A hit right on the right nipple by an angry wasp did that to me.
 
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