53-year-old Massachusetts victim fall onto nest in her yard; remains hospitalized
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comYellow jackets sting woman more than 500 times
Seeded on Tue Sep 7, 2010 11:34 AM EDT (msnbc.com)
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WOW! I cannot imagine being stung 500 times by yellow jackets. I was on a riding mower lately and ran over a yellow jacket nest. I mean they were out of the nest and onto me in a split second. I had to jump from the mower and run, as they stung me in the neck and back while running from them! It was not a pleasant experience at all.
I have not seen any yellow jackets at all in my stays in maryland and virginia this summer. Hope and pray this lady will recover fully..
The exact same thing happened to me, they were underground and as soon as i rode over it they were on me. Stinging me in the head; it was a burning sensation that lasted oalmost 48 hours.
OMG...how awful! This poor woman!!!
I got stung by a bumble bee when I was 9 or 10 yrs old...that sucked...I can't even begin to imagine what that was like for that woman...Ugh
I was painting a door leaning against an old iron clothesline pole, and didn't realize until I was almost done that my head was literally inches from a hole in the pole which was the entrance to a yellow jacket nest. There were 3 posted right at the entrance staring me down but I didn't hear even a buzz.
The irony was that the door was a replacement for one that had a carpenter ant colony inside it. I still nuked the yellow jackets but feel bad about it now. That day i really felt like a temporary tenant on my own property and that the insects could eliminate me easily if they ever got the notion.
I've heard carbon dioxide enrages beefolk and wonder if that has anything to do with the lawnmower-based attacks.
I aint gonna bs but I actually threw a rock at a yellow jacket nest when i was like 9 years old for fun and ran as fast as i could and ended up being stung on my left brow right above my eye and i will tell you that their sting is extremely nasty and painful. It felt like extinguishing a lit cigar on your skin. I just cant imagine being stung 500 times.
We did that as kids but only on VERY VERY rainy days!! They don't fly well when it is really pouring down rain. Never got stung!
Well, my thoughts and prayers for her. She is in the hospital and that's a good thing there. Medicines to help with the pain and to counter attack the Yellow Jackets stings.
I wish her the best.
Here is a great tip if you have a sting or three (this won't work with 500), after you remove the stinger apply some cheap white vinegar straight. It's amazing. It's our go to stuff for the occassional sting.
Poor woman! I wish her well and hope she got some good pain medication. I once got stung 3 times--so painful I can't imagine what 500 would be like.
Actually the pain from such a large attack would be manageable with IV pain medication. Her bigger problem right now is the large amount of venom in her body which can really wreak havoc. This woman is at serious risk and some of be major complications from such considerable invenomation usually occur a few days after the attack when her body gets over the immediate shock and tries to metabolize the toxins. I hope the hospital keeps her for at least a week and hopefully longer. I suppose it depends on her health insurance.
I have a ton of all sorts of stinging insects in my garden this year but thankfully my dh and I have been stung only once each. Poor lady, we wish you a speedy recovery and really cold winter to freeze those suckers dead.
Thanks for reporting the additional information.
Also, wasp venom contains an alarm producing chemical. When you hit or squash a wasp, the chemical is released into the air, signaling other wasps to come and sting..... (A yellow Jacket is a type of wasp....)
That's horrific. Yellow jackets are the worst of the stinger types I think. Hornets are nasty but yellow jackets are @!$%#ing jacked up speedy as hell. A hornet will come in and give you one big nasty sting, but a yellow jacket will zip in and sting you three times practically before your nerves have even registered the first one.
When i was a kid, I used to run into their underground nests all the time. They also like dead trees, and I sat on a few nests myself while hiking in the woods and blazing a new trail. Ornery little critters. They also like to frequent those evergreen type bushes. We used to dig up the nests actually. One kid would stand guard with a can of bee spray, knocking down the incoming. The other two would pour gas on the nest, and start digging until they hit the hive. The size of some of those nests were tremendous. They are by far one of the worst bees around. They attack for no good reason sometimes. Was stung many times as a kid, but I think we took a lot more out than ever got us.
Yellow jackets are a type of hornet.
I got stung over 50 as a kid. It was a horrid experience, so I can't fathom 500. Hope this lady pulls through.
Same here. I was stung by over 100 when I was about 5 growing up in MA. 500? WOW.
I've had several experiences with yellow jackets. They are very aggresssive and will chase you for a long distance. I've always found the nest to be underground with at least two entrances/exits. They need to watch and see where they fly to their nest and treat it around dark when they are all in the ground. I pray the woman will be okay and is receiving the best of care.
They need to send in Billy the Exterminator! He's the man. I know he would take care of it!
Good idea on Billy the exterminater!!!! Prayers for the lady, I hope she recovers quickly. the battle has just begun
if georeg bush was still in ofice this wuldnt have hapenned!!! lolzomg
if georeg bush was stil in office this wuldn't have hapenned!!!! lolzomg
I hope they decide to investigate a little further. I thought the article ended a little abruptly. Oh well, we cant find the nest...huh?? Look again!
It's frequent that yellow jackets hve nests in the ground or concealed under vegetation debris on the ground. A Florida man some years ago stepped onto a very large nest hidden beneath leaves accumulating in a wooded area near his home - I don't recall how many hundreds of times he was stung, but the attack killed him. Another similar attack in central Florida saw the victim leap into a pond to escape - and the vicious creatures actually hovered above the water, stinging him whenever he came up for air!
This is a very serious injury to the lady; indeed we should all hope for her recovery.
I know they can be difficult to find...but didn't the article say she fell on it?
We'll pray for this lady. I was stung 10 times a couple years back when I got too close to an underground nest near a plant. I ran like heck, and was lucky to get out with only 10 - very painful.
If it was me, I would be a goner for sure. I'm thinking good thoughts for this poor woman and for all the folks who risked their own safety to help her.
OUCH!!!!!!!
Bees and Ants are the Devils work....
Like that foosmanball bobby bushay
ok I am lost
Brooke-I hope that was a joke. Bees, ants and yes, yellow jackets, all have a roll in nature. As a beekeeper in Maryland I can say I get asked to check on all different kinds of nests. Honey bees, bumble bees and mud dauber wasps are useually less aggresive of the bunch, resorting to attacking when their nest is in danger. Almost all bees,wasps and yellow jackets are rather docile away from the nest. If some stranger were lurking around your home you might be a little aggressive too.
Before anyone can say otherwise, I truly feel for the poor woman. I choose to put myself into those situation and stings are part of the day. I've been stung by them all at this point and none exactly tickle. I know the IV morphine should knock the pain out, but the venom takes time. I know roughly 900-1000 honey bee(any sub-species) is fatal, but I don't know what the count is for YJackets. I hope she makes a quick recovery. I also hope the call in an experienced person to find and remove/elimnate the hive.
Brooke - mopman was referring to a movie "The Waterboy" with Adam Sandler.
Anyway, hope this woman recovers from this - I couldn't imagine!
When i recovered i would wage full scale war on all yellow jackets i could find.
Personally, I say we torture them by covering their holes in the ground with speakers and blast Justin Beiber, Hannah Montana and some Lady Gaga. Then nuke em. Wait...maybe waterboarding before nuking? Yea...in that order.
I like that Justin Beiber and that Hannah Montana has that great party song. I'm still convinced that Lady Gaga is Gwen Stefani.
Yellow Jackets do like to sting. My brother steped on a nest once and got the rest of us stung.
I am terrified of stinging insects anyway, so I personally can't imagine a worse torment than this. Awful, simply awful.
Damn right, a jihad on all yellow jackets! :) This is one of my worst phobias/fears (yep, right up there with sharks). Saying a prayer for you, ma'am.
I just go over a bout with a yellow jacket attact and was a bit fixated on finding and killing ever one of them...it took a while but I found the nest entrance and exit..8'ft apart!!... they are dead now.
Im sure this woman wont be able to go back to her house or sleep at night until someone assures her they are gone. They have to go back and do this for her.
Dude, bees are the reason you enjoy your apples, almonds, and 1/3 of your overall food supply. Totally not fair lumping them in with those $%*&$% yellow jackets. Total monsters. I got stung just once on my foot when I was 8 months pregnant--not sure how I outran them with such a big belly.
And where the heck do these writers and EMTs live? Don't people in MA know yellow jackets nest in the ground?
I wonder if there is pain medication strong enough to handle this woman's pain?! And how long will the pain last? Poor woman, hope she will make it through this.
morphine - lots.
A few years back a contractor working at my house hit a Yellow Jacket nest while using a trenching machine to install an underground electrical cable. He ran about 30 feet before he collapsed. He had been stung over 300 times. He survived OK after a stay in the Hospital.
I'm in Maryland.
What a horrible thing. I hope she is OK!!! Just a word for next time, Place a copper penny on bites and the pain goes away almost immediately, but 500 bites would be difficult...
What is the science behind this penny remedy?
My guess is it's an old wive's tale. But for this poor lady, I'm guessing all that'd happen is she'd be in agonizing pain AND out five bucks...
Pennies are money too. I don't exactly collect them and buy stuff with them because it would be embarassing but not as embarassing as trying to pay with a check and it not going through.
winker~ What on earth are you talking about?
i would sneak up on the nest...(watch where they enter the ground) and put something white next to it so it's easy to find at dusk. then...dump of few 'chugs' of gasoline into the hole, and seal it off with a stone or some dirt. yes, some of the grass will die, but it's always worked for me. you don't need to set the nest on fire, no matter what my dad thinks. the fumes do the work.
damn them to hell.
Absolutely correct, Jim! I dug one out three years ago without getting a sting using an aerosol spray bottle of gasoline to force them back when the few that got out of the nest attacked. Filled it with gasoline and watched for OTHER escape routes and filled them full too as the rascals came out.
Again, didn't get any stings. When I finally dug it out the nest was about 4 inches deep (under ground) and interlaced around roots of a small crab apple tree which made it difficult to dig out. It was perhaps 14 inches long and 10 inches wide. Lost the crab apple tree, but another one grew back from the same root.
Remembering back to days in the USMC when we a heliborne assault found us setting up a hasty defense. My compadre lay down right in a nest of yellow jackets and got perhaps 50 stings. After he got up we beat them off and he stumbled back in to the same nest again and got still more stings. They are unrelenting mean little dudes.
However, if you light the gas on fire, it will pull most of the petrol compounds back out of the soil to where grass can regrow in that spot sooner.
They are the one species of insect I would most definately like to see go exinct. Not any other hornet species, just the Yellow Jackets. They are also a big problem here in the Idaho, Montana, Wyoming area, so I imagine they must be a big problem in most States at this point.
petrochemicals decompose with biological activity just like wood or other things. just takes taim same as nature's things. the idea is not to overload the environment. oil is fromthe ground to start with.
George Bush should be slapped for causing this Yellow Jacket attack. Perhaps Holder will file a human rights case against the insects.
We have underground hornet/yellow jacket nests here in Montana. My dogs have stumbled into them a few times on our property and fortunately a good blast of water drives them away.
When I find a nest I kill it.
I live in Ohio, a couple years ago, my dogs did something to an underground Yellow Jacket nest, not sure what. Each dog (4 of them) had 30 to 50 stings! Eveyone survived and was fine. I found the nest and poured boiling water into it that night, to kill them.
I hope that woman is OK
How can you not find a nest that has enough Yellow Jackets to sting this poor lady 500 times. You just have to watch the ground. They will begin to go in and out again. Then walk up and treat the area. I've had this happen to me twice, and my youngest son, when three, walked right onto a nest and had them all over him in a blink. It's truly a scarey experience.
Oh my heart goes out to this woman. I was eight when almost the same thing happened to me was in the hospital for two weeks and almost died. She is in for a lot the next few days.
I have found nests before while mowing. They (The Bees) donot take kindly to a lawn mower sitting on top of their nest. I got the battle scars to prove it. I hope she makes a quick and full recovery. They need to look again the nest is there in the ground somewhere.