ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 7, 1996 TAG: 9608070075
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
RESEARCHERS now believe that the speed of sting removal, and not technique, is key in reducing welt sizes.
The time-honored advice for taking care of bee stings, quoted faithfully in medical texts and first-aid manuals everywhere, is wrong, according to a study published in the current issue of The Lancet, a British medical journal.
This challenge to tradition, expected to set the medical world abuzz, concerns the proper way to remove the stinger, or, as entomologists prefer to call it, the sting.
Bumblebees and wasps, including yellow jackets, rarely leave these barbed weapons embedded in their victims, and so were not involved in the new study. But honeybees nearly always leave the stinger with the sting, and the fact that the bees rip off their hind ends in the process and die is small consolation for the pain they inflict.
The standard recommendation has long been to scrape or tease the stinger out of the skin carefully with the edge of a knife blade, fingernail or, nowadays, a credit card, and never to pinch, pluck or grab it. That might seem logical enough; a venom sac is still attached to the back end of the stinger, and it does look as if squeezing the sac would squirt more venom into the wound, making it swell and hurt even more.
``It was thought to be like squeezing the bulb of an eyedropper or a turkey baster,'' said Richard Vetter, an entomologist at the University of California at Riverside and one of the new study's authors. ``That makes sense until you test it.''
It was their own experience with bees as much as their training as scientists that led Vetter and two other entomologists, Dr. Kirk Visscher, also of Riverside, and Dr. Scott Camazine of Pennsylvania State University, to question the established wisdom. Longtime beekeepers, they have each been stung thousands of times, and it seemed to them that speed mattered more than style in removing stingers.
``I knew from my experience as a beekeeper,'' Visscher said, ``that if you get the sting out quicker, you're better off.''
The researchers' theory was also based on their knowledge of honeybee anatomy. What few people realize is that the honeybee leaves its victim not only the stinger and the venom sac, but also a chunk of its abdomen, a cluster of nerves, various muscles and, as the scientists politely describe it, the end of its digestive tract.
Even with the rest of the bee gone, enough nerve and muscle remain attached to the stinger to keep it twitching visibly, working its barbs deeper into the flesh and pumping more venom out of the sac by means of organs that resemble a valve and piston.
He and his colleagues reasoned that if a person could pluck out the stinger before all the venom was pumped out of the sac, a smaller, less painful welt might result.
``This matters,'' Visscher said, ``because when people get stung, they will spend time thinking `what was I supposed to do?' and looking for the proper tool.''
All that time, venom is being pumped into the wound. So, Visscher and his colleagues urge, do not hesitate. Just grab that stinger and yank.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB