Not totally sure. More than 2, less than 5.
16-20 times when I was a kid, then never again.
In grade school we used to catch honey bees in sandwich bags while they were visiting dandelions on the playground. It’s a miracle I was never stung then. I’ve been stung once: About five years ago, walking barefoot across my lawn. A number of yellowjackets were very conspicuously buzzing low around the grass, not sure why. Also not sure why I didn’t think it was possible for me to step on one, but I assume that’s what happened because when I got back inside I felt a very sharp pain building in my foot, and it lasted for almost an hour if I remember right.
I guess I’ll have to wait for it to happen again to find out if I’m allergic.
More times than I can remember, 20+ ???. A couple memorable one, outhouse while camping, 3 bites on the ass, could have been worse. Golfing, hit into the trees but I have a shot out, lining my shot and I look up because I hear buzzing, wasp nest about a foot and a half, 5 bites on the head. i swelled up and look like a neanderthal because of the swollen forehead.
I got stung by bees and wasps loads as a kid, at least twice a year. It gave me a lasting not-quite-phobia, my only one. Only been stung once or twice as an adult.
What’s the deal with wasps leaving you alone as an adult? It’s not like I’m not active around the garden, mowing, moving stuff, playing badminton. Must be the more threatening, constant high motion, not so much the trespassing in their space.
I do always wear flip flops on the grass and force the kids too as well, I feel that’s how I got it most as a kid, bare feet.
Many stings. I’ve had an attack from a wasp’s nest in the garden that I tripped over as a kid and a dead bee in a pool that floated into my mouth to sting when I was also very young.
But my all-time favourite was a centipede in Japan which stung my toe while I was asleep. I’ve genuinely never known pain like it.
One that I remember around five years ago entered under the jacket sleeve while riding the bike and stung my arm. Was somewhat distracting.
Not that many times. But;
I used to love swimming in the ocean and such when I was younger and got a nasty sting from a jelly at one point on my arm and across my back. Agony. Bees and stuff ain’t got shit on that experience, and it wasn’t even one of the really bad jellies.
Don’t mess with jellies! ( ༎ຶ෴༎ຶ )
I also got bit by a spider (I think) on the back of my leg during a holiday trip in Romania. I had a really bad reaction to it. I’ll leave out the gory details but I did need a trip to A&E the following day and spent the rest of said holiday limping around with something that resembled a gunshot wound on my leg (kinda amazed it didn’t really leave a scar).
Worst I had off a bee was when I was doing 80 on my bike and I caught a large bumblebee full-force on my bottom lip. Not sure if it stung me but it hardly mattered, this was somewhat equivalent of getting shot in the face with a paintball. Unexpectedly. Whilst doing 80. On a motorbike*. I handled it well. (҂◡_◡) ᕤ
Wasp and bee stings don’t worry me too much. What I seem to have a much worse time with is mosquito bites. I’m sensitive to those and it seems as I’m getting older my body keeps overreacting to those more and more. Given the choice now I think I’d rather take a sting; they’re a lot shorter lived, less irritating and with less swelling. Bites end up bothering me for days.
* Actually, come to think of it, every wasp and bee sting I’ve had in the past decade has been on my bike. =(
Oh man, too many to count over the years. Quite a few bee stings as a youngster and various clashes with yellow jackets over the years. Here are a few of the most memorable ones:
When I was maybe 8 years old I got stung on my ear by some sort of wasp. It was large and I can’t seem to find what type it was, but it wasn’t a yellow jacket. That was probably the one that hurt the most!
A couple years ago I was fixing the bottom steps of our front porch/deck and some yellow jackets had decided to live under there one summer. After repeated attempts to get the work done and generous wasp spray under my deck followed by running as fast as I could, I probably got stung maybe 3-4 times separately. I despise those little bastards and for years they would love to make nests all around my house. They haven’t been back the last couple years though!
I work at a sugar production factory so we tend to get our share of yellow jacket infestations here all over the grounds with their being sugar dust/syrup all over. One time I was setting up some computer systems in a remote building on the grounds in the mid '90s and a yellow jacket had crawled up inside my pant leg and stung me once on the inside of my thigh about half way up. That really hurt!
The worst experience was when I was 19 and working on an asphalt paving crew. We were moving our grounds where we kept the equipment and while uprooting the fence to move it, we came upon a large yellow jacket nest. I was always a pretty quick and fast kid and I immediately ran as fast as I could while throwing my shirt off. I swear it felt like I got stung 50 times, but after my nurse mom’s insistence to go to the clinic, I believe they only counted 15 or so. I do remember feeling a little light headed, but it was hot too so who knows if it had any effect on me or not. I really hate those things.
Twice as a kid by the local Texas yellow jackets.
But by far my worst experience was when I was a kid and we visited relatives on Louisiana. They had a horse in the field next to the backyard, and I went out to visit it. While I was standing there interacting with the horse I did not realize I was standing in a pile of fire ants. By the time I noticed there were hundreds if not thousands of ants on me stinging me from bare feet and up my leg. If you are not familiar, fire ants bite and inject a toxin, and they can do this repeatedly and rapidly. It burns like hell, then turns into little painful blisters. I had hundreds of blisters mostly on my feet but up my legs.
This all occurred many years ago before fire ants were in Texas, so I was stupid and did not know to look out for them. Now they are in Texas, and I kill the nests as soon as I find them on my property. And they have wiped out many local wildlife. Hate them!
A lot.
Here are two stories.
In the summer of 1984 I took a motorcycle trip from Maine to western Montana and back. On the return trip somewhere in eastern South Dakota I remember seeing several bee hives off to my left and then rode through a mess of bees crossing the rural, two lane highway. My helmet filled up with angry bees that stung me several time in the face and neck. I was going well over the speed limit because that is what you do when crossing the Great Plains, and I managed to keep control of the bike and laid it down next to a cow pasture. I took off my helmet, shook out the bees and while I picked out the stingers some cows moseyed over and were watching me. I drove to a store and bought some Benadryl and took a bunch. The next morning I woke to an eye swollen shut and and a lumpy face looking like I had the shit beat out of me. I had been on the road for weeks, hadn’t shaved and hair down to my shoulders.
The funny thing was that I was planning to stop and visit a college buddy living in Minneapolis in a yuppie condo. I didn’t have his exact address so I walked around the place, still wearing my leather jacket and found a group of folks hanging out at the pool. So I asked if anyone knew my friend. The general reaction was one of muted horror, except this gorgeous young woman in a bikini came over and brightly said she knew where he lived and took me by the hand and delivered me to his door.
The other time I had bought my first house and was renovating it. It was an old house and had wooden gutters. And I was on a ladder up to the second floor with a pry bar pulling the rotting gutters off. I pried one section and emerging from the darkness were many yellow jacket faces. And they attacked. I kept my wits about me and got down off the ladder but they got me good. That weekend I went to the Common Ground fair, a celebration of organic gardening in Maine, and I asked a couple bee keepers for nontoxic options to get rid of yellow jackets. They both immediately said “Raid.”
So I bought the Raid that shoots a stream like 20 feet. And that evening I let them have it. And it worked, except the yellow jackets attempt to flee led them into the house. I heard my wife scream and when I ran in the house was abuzz with yellow jackets. We had an infant son so we grabbed him, ran to his room, stuffed towels under the door and waited till morning. We awoke to signs of slaughter, dead yellow jackets everywhere. I danced on their graves.
54 years on this planet, and never had the pleasure.
I don’t mess with bees, and they don’t mess with me.
Like with many people here I remember being stung several times as a kid. Last real sting I remember was in High School, waiting to get picked up after school on a Friday and got stung right next to my eye. By the time I had to play in marching band for the football game that night my eyelid was nearly swollen shut. Fun stuff!
Nowadays we have an understanding, especially around the raspberry bushes. The stingy insects get all the flowers to themselves and I get the leaves with Japanese Beetles and the ripe berries.
Oh, dozens of times in he past 60 years. Most recently 3 at once when I accidently disturbed an underground wasp nest at the foot of a ig tree in my backyard last summer.
Funnily, I got stung by a wasp last week while on vacation (while completely minding my own business in a swimming pool no less, evil asshole wasp)… first time in at least 25 years. I was much more of an outdoorsy person as a child/teen but even then I didn’t get hit much after a couple of times as a small child.
All wasps are assholes, imho. I enjoy almost every other insect out there, but wasps are right in line with mosquitoes, ticks, bed bugs and Elon Musk on the list of things the world can do without.
My first sting was on my bike in college. Made it through childhood without incident, but coming around a corner on campus I felt a “thump” on my neck like someone hit me with an acorn—I had no idea what happened, I didn’t see anything, so it was a startling sensation. As I slowed and got off my bike to try to figure out what happened it started burning and I put two and two together and realized I must’ve just ran into some stinging insect.
Since then had two bee stings on my feet, one at a pool, one in a friend’s yard. They’re never as bad as I imagined as a kid; without any experience at that point my mind made them out to be more painful than the reality. And yet in that first instant they’re always a little worse than I remember. It’s like “ouch, must’ve gotten stung, that sucks…ok OUCH, WHOA, I’m actually ANGRY at how much this stings!” And then I calm back down again after a minute.
One, like many of you, on the back of the neck as a youngster. Then not for quite a long time. All the fire ant bites during the 6 years I lived in Tallahassee don’t count…
Last summer yellowjackets made a nest at the base of a fencepost right near my vegetable bed. I only found that out by getting nailed a dozen or so times around the ankles. The nest was in an awkward enough spot to get at that we called an exterminator.
And now, we have a big cantilever deck umbrella, the crank cord of which just broke. While taking the umbrella down to try to figure out how to replace the cord, discovered that yellowjackets had a nest inside the main support. Only one sting required to learn that.
Went out last night and duct-taped over all the openings, only to discover today that I missed one. They are quite actively guarding it, so will have to wait til tonight to hopefully fully entomb the bastards.
15-ish years ago I managed to remove a baldfaced hornet nest hanging from branches overhanging our long driveway without getting stung. I get a lot of mileage out of the story of how I accomplished that.
I was stung on a finger when I was very young. It swelled up like a sausage. My mother took me to the doctor who told us I was allergic and should avoid getting stung in the future.
30 years later, I am sitting on my back porch drinking a beer. Unnoticed by me, some sort of wasp landed in my beer. I drank it. It stung me on the soft palate.
Now, I had a quick decision to make. I was home alone. Significant swelling could well compromise my airway. Do I call the squad or risk waiting it out?
It was probably dumb, but I waited and the swelling was fortunately not too severe.