In the face! (dang bees)

In about 25 years of avid cycling, I've never been stung by a bee while riding. This afternoon, I had one of the little buggers pull a near-perfect hole-in-one into my mouth at 20mph. I spit it out, but it stung me right next to the mouth.

I hope this isn't a trend. This was my third sting ever. The last one was while spectating at a cyclocross last year.

27 years between my first two stings, and about 27 weeks between the second two...

I've been a little worried about the mass bee deaths, but right now I'm feeling like there are plenty of them.

Okay, it's hardly newsworthy, but I'm annoyed. Maybe it'll bring up an actual amusing anecdote from someone else...

I got one in my helmet at an autocross once and almost killed a courseworker. Bastards wouldn't give me a rerun.

I was badly bit by a dog today. I'm happier in my shoes than in yours.

For you ransom I have this picture of the football sized mass of bees that hung out in my pear tree last year

Pear honey...YUM! Did you help yourself to any?

Also, THIS.

I want to start a hive, real bad.

Cyclocross is fun, you should race next time instead of watch!

In reply to ditchdigger:

Just last year? Are they gone? Is it safe to visit? Have you reached an accord, or are they on to greener pastures?

In reply to Joshua:

I had already raced that day (Masters C 35+); I was watching an old friend and riding buddy decimate the Masters A 35+ group.

Bastard. His race plan was "I'll go off the front of the Masters A and catch the Pro/Cat A group ahead of me." And then he does it.

He was always way faster than me, since we were 13...

Yiiiiiiikes. Yanno, I catch bats when they're in the house. Snakes don't bug me, nor do spiders. Mice either, in fact I kind of like the little buggers, as long as they're miles from my house. I pick turtles up off the road, including snappers, and help them across. But bees give me a whole-body shudder. Comes from being allergic I guess.

Lesley, my girlfriend is along the same lines as you, but also she really doesn't like moths for some reason. Luckily one of our cats loves moths, thinks they're a very tasty treat. Ransom, a few years ago, I was driving an International medium duty truck had a wasp bounce off the driver's side rear view and land on my face. I know your pain.

Josh wrote: I got one in my helmet at an autocross once and almost killed a courseworker. Bastards wouldn't give me a rerun.

that visual is priceless...

Lesley wrote: I catch bats when they're in the house.

You should call the Fire Department.

Last fall I had the occasion to run the lawn tractor over the entrance to a hornet nest. Those big black/white ones with the bad attitude toward strangers... all of a sudden it felt like someone was driving nails into my back. They got me in the ear, the arm pit, about 5 times on my back and the back of my knee.

Twenty minutes later there was a total genocide in my backyard. I tossed a colander over the hole and sat there with a can of hornet spray alternately poking and shooting. I would have mounted their little heads on toothpicks all around the yard if I had more time.

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker: Colander over the hole. Brilliant.

I would have left the lawnmower running over the hole...

Josh wrote: I got one in my helmet at an autocross once and almost killed a courseworker. Bastards wouldn't give me a rerun.

A bee in your helmet? I suspect sabotage by one of your competitors!

I'm feeling pretty lucky after reading some of these. GPS' description of having nails driven into his back is way past anything I've had to deal with. And again, unlike griffin729, it hasn't been a wasp.

This time actually ended up being much less painful than the last one, despite being on the face. Today I'm just a little itchy...

It does make me a touch nervous, though. I was developing the impression that the ground-dwelling wasps in my backyard were not very aggressive because they were solitary, and didn't have a nest to defend. But bees and relatives keep doing things I wasn't expecting. Last year we had a big nest of bumble bees in the shop, shortly after being told that bumble bees were solitary and don't nest...

NSFW language on the image. Funny, though:

http://www.meh.ro/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/meh.ro7298.png

First time I got stung by a bee I was walking bare foot in the yard stepped on one and was stung right in the bottom of my foot. The second time I was camping and I sat on a log, I got stung right in the butt.

ransom wrote: It does make me a touch nervous, though. I was developing the impression that the ground-dwelling wasps in my backyard were not very aggressive because they were solitary, and didn't have a nest to defend. But bees and relatives keep doing things I wasn't expecting. Last year we had a big nest of bumble bees in the shop, shortly after being told that bumble bees were solitary and don't nest...

Not sure who told you that.. from what I know of bees.. they ALL form hives of a sort. Maybe not a lot of them in one place, but their survival depends on a "hive mentality"

I had a wasp decide to sting me in the back of the head while I was sleeping. I was not happy.

93EXCivic wrote: I had a wasp decide to sting me in the back of the head while I was sleeping. I was not happy.

Wasps are shiny happy people

never run across more than one of the big black/white hornets, and it seemed perfectly content to leave me alone as long as I avoided it like the plaigue, same with the wasp that was trying to build it's nest on the inner bead of a trailer wheel on the trailer I was trying to hose off (btw they don't tend to like water too much, and their nests aren't much match for a gardenhose with a firehose nozzle ), but we did/do have a nest of yellowjackets about 2 feet from the back door to my house which may or may not have been killed. I have encountered a massive yellowjacket hive on a part of mountain bike trail I helped reroute, about a month after we finished up work on that particular section. I do believe I aborted a sub-10 second 0-60 time getting away from that particular piece of trail...

in other news, it seems as if wasps really do not appreciate being run over with a bicycle, as I learned on my 17th birthday when I decided to go out mountian biking and got stung on the ankle. I don't think that one stopped hurting for about an hour, after the initial ouch of the sting itself went away, it was replaced by the sting from the salt in the sweat getting into the sting and hurting like hell

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

93EXCivic wrote: I had a wasp decide to sting me in the back of the head while I was sleeping. I was not happy.

Wasps are shiny happy people

Resilient shiny happy people.

I trapped a wasp in a plastic container recently, with the aim of curating it for a Zoology project. It survived for days in that container. I'm pretty sure I observed it doing little wasp push-ups, and it may have even scratched off each day onto the container wall.