A piece of ice held at the point of puncture will relieve the pain and burning sensation in the majority of cases of insect sting.
In serious cases, of course, the services of a physician should be obtained immediately.
Honeybee
(Apis mellifera)
At first thought it may seem unjustified to include the common honeybee in a discussion of poisonous creatures of the desert. Although the honeybee is not a desert native, having been imported from Europe, it has established itself in the wild state throughout the Southwest in locations providing adequate moisture and sufficient nectar-producing flowers.
Honeybees on the honeycomb
Throughout much of the United States honeybees are encountered in numbers only in apiaries operated by beekeepers, or in bee trees where the insects have established themselves. In the desert climatic conditions are ideal for honeybees, and they have become widespread and well established.
They obtain water at springs, seeps, waterholes, cattle tanks, dripping faucets, and leaking water containers, often congregating in such numbers around sources of water that they become a distinct nuisance to men and to animals. Individual honeybees are frequently found in flowers, or may fly in through an open automobile window, and sting one of the car’s occupants. Small children sometimes receive stings while playing on white clover lawns or going barefoot. Farm boys may be severely stung as a result of molesting beehives or throwing stones at bees’ nests in trees or caves.
Normally, poison introduced by the sting of a honeybee is local in effect and little more than a painful inconvenience to the person stung. There are many cases on record, however, of persons and domestic animals receiving stings from so many of the enraged insects that serious and even fatal results have followed.
During the past half century, medical records show a number of deaths each resulting from a single sting. Jones[7] made an intensive study of this problem and was able to show conclusively that occasional individuals become supersensitive to honeybee venom. If persons in such condition receive even the small amount of poison injected by a single sting, the resulting excessive susceptibility may be fatal unless proper treatment is administered immediately. To such persons the honeybee is definitely a poisonous and dangerous creature.