STINGS: PREVENTION AND CURE
The bee mittens, the veil, and the smoker are all preventive measures. A good deal depends on the way you behave when working with bees. If you are nervous and anxious you probably will act that way and the bees have a way of understanding and are likely to find you.
Remove the sting by a scraping motion with a knife blade or some hive tool you happen to have handy. If you use the thumb and finger you squeeze the tiny bulb at the outer end of the sting, and inject the poison into your blood.
Experts have little or no faith in cures which are rubbed on. They underestimate the comfort one gets "doing something" for a spot that hurts so mighty bad. So go ahead and put on alcohol or baking soda or ammonia; you can't do a bit of harm that way. In the meantime nature is busy neutralizing the acid the bee punished you with.
Mrs. Comstock, in "How to Keep Bees," gives these maxims for opening the hive:
Have the smoker ready to give forth a good volume of smoke.
Use the smoker to scare the bees rather than to punish them.
Do not stand in front of the hive lest the bees passing out and in take umbrage.
Be careful not to drop any implements with which you are working; take hold of all things firmly.
Move steadily and not nervously.
Do not run if frightened, for the bees understand what running away means as well as you do.
If the bees attack you, move slowly away, smoking them off as you go.
If a bee annoys you by her threatening attitude for some time, kill her ruthlessly.