20 
dr. Miller’s 
Beestings. — Q- If you wash yourself with salt and water be- 
fore handling bees, will it help to keep them from stinging? 
A. Unless your hands are dirty, I don’t believe washing in 
salt water will do any good, and then soap is better than salt. 
When bees are swarming they seldom feel like stinging. 
Q. What is the best remedy for a beesting, either for a person 
on whom the sting swells or on one on whom it doesn’t? It does 
not swell on me. I have heard that a sting will always swell on 
a healthy person. Is that true? 
A. To give all the remedies that have been offered for bee- 
stings would occupy pages. Perhaps as good as any other remedy 
is a plaster of mud. Most beekeepers of experience seem to 
think that no remedy does much good; the only thing they do 
being to get the sting out as soon as possible. Don’t pull the 
sting out by grasping it between the thumb and finger, for that 
helps to squeeze more poison into the wound; but scrape it out 
with the finger nail, or else, if it is in the hand, by striking the 
hand hard upon the thigh with a sort of sliding motion, which 
wipes out the sting. A sting will swell on a healthy person in 
nearly every case if the person is not used to it, and perhaps a 
little worse on an unhealthy person ; but after being stung often 
one generally becomes to an extent immune, so there is little or 
no swelling. Among remedies offered are ammonia, salaratus of 
soda, juice of lempn or plantain leaves, kerosene, cloths wet in 
cold water, etc. 
Q. Does the sting of the honeybee ever prove fatal? I have 
heard that if a person is stung on the end of the nose it is fatal. 
Is this a fact? 
A. I don’t believe a sting of itself ever caused a death. There 
have been cases where persons died after being stung. I’ve been 
stung many times on the nose, and I’m not at all dead. 
Beeswax. — Q. What is beeswax, or what does it originate 
from? 
A. Look closely at a lot of bees, especially at swarming-time, 
and you will see some of them that have, along the underside of 
their abdomens, little plates of pure beeswax, somewhat pear- 
shaped. That’s where the wax originates, being secreted by the 
bee from the food it eats, somewhat as the cow secretes milk 
from the food she eats. 
Q. Since (as it would seem) no established beekeeper pro- 
duces enough wax to work into his necessary foundation, where 
does the surplus come from? 
A. “Things are not what they seem;” at least not always. An 
