10 Comments

  1. blank Michelle D. Belisle says:

    I was always told to slap some baking soda paste or mud on a sting by my grandma and aunts-Wow thanks for the info! I seem to be a bee magnent. The wasps and hornets are the worst!

  2. We are beekeepers and have had our fair share of stings.

    I'm afraid that some of the remedies listed above are less than effective. I can attest to a water/baking soda treatment, as Michelle mentions above. I've heard that some toothpastes work very well, also. Ice can reduce swelling and pain for quite a while.

    Cider vinegar, tobacco, mud, and charcoal are all lovely and useful substances… but probably should not be your first choice for beesting.

    Andy, The Grateful Garden, Calfornia

    1. Has no-one noticed that the insect shown above is not a bee but a wasp? Wasp stings need acid (eg vinegar) and bee stings need alkaline (baking soda solution) to help neutralise.

    2. I agree Andy. The best remedy that I have used is baking soda. I got stung by a big wasp, excruciating pain and within 5 min poured baking soda on the sting and within minutes the pain was gone as well as the redness that surrounded the sting.

  3. Cut an onion in half a and place it on the sting…keep it there untill the pain stops. Takes about 10-20 minutes, and then no pain. I grew up on a farm, and we had bee hives.

  4. also soy sauce. // regular soy sauce works also with burns & blistered skin. // best deodorant: milk of magnesia.

  5. When my brother was a Boy Scout, they were advised to keep a dime in their pocket at all times (of course back then it was a silver dime!) Not only good for a phone call, but also for bee-stings. When stung, you spit on the dime and apply it to the sting. No idea what the reaction is between saliva and silver, but it does work for me! I still keep an old real-silver dime with me.

  6. i use the onion method too, worked well when my son was young. worked i thought in less than 10 minutes, but maybe with my boy being intrigued with what i was doing may have sped the process …

  7. Honey only works on a honeybee sting. The reason is that honeybee venom is ALKALINE, and honey is an acid with a pH of 3. If you are stung by a wasp or yellow jacket/bald faced hornet, the opposite holds true. Use a baking soda paste (alkaline) because wasp venom is ACIDIC. I learned this in my washington state university extension beekeeping course.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *