Revenge of the humble honey bee

Everything happens for a reason. The HoneyBee Effect. 因祸得福. There are just so many titles I can put for this particular entry.

Bees are known to die immediately after stinging someone or something, in the case of normal "working class" bees that is, from what I know. For weeks, I have discovered dead bees lying around the house during my weekly floor sweeping session on Sundays.

How and why the bees even bother to fly all the way to the 19th storey, and to die at the corner of the room for that matter, have been much of a mystery. Conspiracy theories include "Bee hives on the roof" and "Queen Bee scented Fan Blade". These seem the most logical of explanations for the dead bees that are often found in segments or with broken wings. Death by high-speed fan blades. >.<

Which brings me back to the "revenge". Apparently the scout bees were "killed in action" by the death blades of the fan; the colony must have sent a commando bee for the latest mission. I call it "Guerilla Kamakaze".

I was already on long term medication, "Cetirizine" for my drug allergy with could last for up to another 2 years! To put it simply, the medication is an antihistamine used to minimise inflammation (hives, or rashes to the layman).

Now, it was just like any other nights when I went to sleep after a bout of MSN and a nice, warm shower. As I slid into my blanket thinking of what dreams I could dream of, I felt a sharp acute pain on the underside of my right thigh where my hamstring is. My instant reflex was to jump up, turn on the lights and find the culprit.

There, lying at the position where my thigh used to be on the mattress, was the commando bee which had sacrificed itself. After hastily checking the bee if it was still alive and its butt for the sting, I took the nail-clipper to check for the sting dislodged on my thigh. I COULDN'T FIND IT! The wound was of a small but prominent red hue. Admist all the chaos of finding the sting and cleaning my wound, it has grown to the size of an average mosquito bite. Applying alcohol and calamine lotion was the only and next best thing to do at that time.

On the next day, the insect bite has grown to the size of my palm. The muscles around the area was stiff and it was slightly painful and relatively itchy. And I am experiencing this despite my daily dose of antihistamines; wondered how my body will react if I weren't on such medication. A case of my drug allergy trumping the sting?

Anyways, my colleague was rather worried for me because she had a friend who apparently died from an innocent ant bite! The next morning, I took to the doc and was given an injection of a rather heavy dose of antihistamines, 20ml if I weren't wrong. The swell didn't go down immediately, and it took 2 days of 30mg of Prednisolone for the bee sting to subside. The itch didn't, though.

I think I need to have a thorough cleansing of my blood hah!