Lymphedema & Hornet/YellowJacket Sting

I've just been stung, probably by a hornet or yellow-jacket, on my left-side/lower-back area.

I saw them going into the ground by a rotted stump, near where I was working, ... but I didn't see them flying around, so I figured I was sorta safe. [I was putting up some temporary fencing for the dogs.]

I'm concerned that this sting might cause the lymphedema to super-kick-in, & cause major swelling.

I put hydrocortisone cream on the sting, took a Benadryl capsule, & am now resting while trying to cool off. It's warm & very humid today.

I'm considering walking across the road to buy some ice for the sting, .. but not right now. Major pain!

Did anyone have swelling from lymphedema, after hornet sting?

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

Susan, Su_Texas my opinions

Yikes and ouch. I know that there is concern about stings in those who have lymphedema and/or are stung on side that lymph nodes were removed. My suggestion is that you contact your health care facility and/or P.T. who treated you for lymphedema. They may want additional precautions taken--one thought that came to mind was short course of prednisone (I have no idea whether or not that would be indicated but thought that or possibly something else could be given to reduce risk of future problem(s)).

Usually, I'm a live & let live type person too, but there are limits.

When a mouse comes inside the house, it dies. And now that hornets are stinging me, they do too.

Once they get excited, they don't calm down, not even days or weeks later. Right now, they seem to be angry & swarming all over town, all over this area. ???

It's probably important to try early prevention, such as the hornet/yellow-jacket traps you hang in trees.

I'll also try the Sevin dust, now that there are established colonies.

Their food choices seem amazing. They really like dog dung & decaying dog food. ??? They'd probably also like decaying fruit & vegetables, if there were any now.

Susan, Su_Texas my opinions

These yellow bee-things live in the ground. I don't know if they're hornets or yellow jackets or what.

In this area, they're really upset & angry for some reason right now (wind? weather?), & are flying around & stinging people.

They seem to be almost everything. Outside the grocery store (which is in a shopping center), the hardware store, ... my back steps & yard, around my truck.

Susan, Su_Texas my opinions

"Ground bees" look like honeybees sort of - they're a little smaller and nest in abandoned mole tunnels and other holes in the ground.

I looked on the Internet and you might know them as mining or digger bees.

Shibden on the last weekend of November. Indoors this time.

Sorry, J, but there's some confused thinking there ...

I've kept bees - and wasps - for 25 years and know a lot about both, I suspect you're confused about the two types of insects, which don't have the same natural history as each other.

Thanks yall. I seem to be doing sorta OK. The place formed a burn-looking thing, about two inches in diameter.

I initially treated it with hydrocortisone cream, & took a Benadryl capsule. Hours later, I started to use aloe vera gel, to try to keep the area from getting infected.

I fixed a hanging trap (with pineapple, sugar, canned cat food), & hung it near the swarming hive(?). Also fixed a plastic jug, with mix of tomato sauce, pineapple, sugar, dry cat food, & olive oil, & hung it near the hive.

They kept swarming for the rest of the day, so I couldn't let the pups out.

After many hours, I tried spraying the hive with bug spray, but it didn't phase them. ???

Late evening, I went shopping for groceries. [Last day of sale]. The grocery person said his dog (Pit Bull) had just been stung by a lot of them yesterday.

And one lady said one flew into her car yesterday, when she opened the door. ???

The fire ants were also out in force yesterday. It was the second very warm & humid day, which followed some cold & wet ones.

Today, I'll try pouring cooking oil down the hole, & covering it with garbage bags.

???

Susan, Su_Texas my opinions

I'm generally a live-and-let-live kinda guy - you can ask the mole who occupied my back yard for three years or so. I think he died of old age.

I had a nest of ground bees in my front yard this summer - a hole in the ground about the size of a penny. My wife told me to watch out for bees as she'd seen the nest earlier. I'd mowed the front yard a couple of times without incident so I wasn't all that worried. To make a really long story short I mowed the lawn in late summer and somehow offended the bees - as I now had a bee fountain in the front yard. I even let them have the lawn mower

Anyway, I waited an hour or so for the bees to calm down and tried to finish mowing the front lawn but the bees would have no part of the idea. Normally it wouldn't bother me because I don't like mowing the lawn but this particular bee nest was about a foot from our front walk and the bees were angry.

So - I went to the hardware store and ask the lady what I can do about bees. She says it's been a bad year for bees and points at some aerosol wasp and hornet spray...

...that turned out to be completely worthless except that it was great fun shooting the bees out of the air with the spray can and that because the wasp spray had a petroleum base and I expended a couple cans of it on the bees and their nest I managed to kill a patch of grass around the bees' nest. Didn't really affect the number of bees but did really piss them off.

So I got on the Internet and started reading. Found out that Sevin dust (made by Ortho) is lethal to bees but relatively safe to handle.
Up until a couple years ago it was approved for dusting pet beds to get rid of fleas and suck. You can still use it on pets but not on kittens or puppies. Sounds reasonably safe.

So I went to another hardware store and bought a 1 lb can of Sevin and the man behind the counter said it was the wrong time of year to be dusting roses but he'd be happy to sell me the Sevin anyway. I told him that I wasn't dusting roses and explained about the bee fountain in my front yard. His response was that if I wanted to use Sevin it would be effective but would probably kill every bee in the yard. I guess they carry it into the nest and it kills everybody in there.

I bought the stuff and used about an ounce in and around the hole.
Two days later the bees were gone and have not returned.

Apologies to beekeeper Mary as like I said, I'm generally a live-and-let-live kinda guy. But if one wants to get rid of bees the method I mentioned is highly recommended.

Tim wrote << Well, I know that when Americans say "ground beef" they mean minced beef, so
I would guess ....

No, perhaps not.

ROFL...never would have thought of that one...gross <g>

As a beekeeper I've always been very concerned about this so looked into it.

as I understand it a sting - or any other damage - won't CAUSE lympho. If a sting (or other damage) is a vector for infection and happens where lympho is already present it could be a problem - because of the reduced immunity in that area.

The advice was always to seek medical help if a lympho area is damaged so that an antibiotic can be administered.

The damage won't cause lympho and won't make it worse if on a lympho area, the potential problem is infection.

So saying, I've had horrible damage to my lympho arm from almost everything except stings and bites - scrapes, cuts, pricks, burns ... and never been infected.

Indeed - but that's only the local reaction to the sting. So will any swelling be.

No it didn't do that. It was walking upwards, which is what they do when they can't fly, it didn't want to be there at all. When your shirt moved against it it felt threatened so used its sting as a defence.

Well, we do grind bees' abdomens (in a mortar, not a mincer) when we're looking for pathogens of a particular disease.

I don't think that's what AG meant though.

As an addendum to my previous post:

In a report in the scientific journal Nature, Japanese scientists at
Tamagawa University in Japan suggest that wasps and hornets may be provoked into attacking by sensing some of the chemicals used in perfume making and food preparation. They extracted a number of volatile chemicals from a pheromone of the worlds largest hornet, Vespa mandarina and found that this extract caused intense alarm and defensive behaviour amongst the hornets.
The chemicals triggering the behaviour (2-pentanol, 3-methyle1-1-butanol and
1-methylbuti1 3-methylbutanoate) are found in some cosmetics and fragrances as well as some manufactured foods. An entomologist at Griffith University in Brisbane Australia, Professor R Kitching said that the reaction of insects to smells on human beings is not an unusual effect which is why some people are more susceptible to mosquitoes for example than others. He also added that some women are more prone to wasp attack during menstruation. So if you wear a perfume and get attacked, avoid it next time.

I want to know what 'ground bees' are ...