I’ll go out on a limb and say that most beekeepers have considered the potential danger of their hobby at some point. We’ve heard tales about things going awry during an inspection, including the story about Mark Turner, the British beek that tragically died from one well-placed sting to the neck. But most of us don’t worry excessively about our bees doing real harm to us, and I suppose those who do eventually take up watercolors or some other relatively nonthreatening pursuit. I came across this very interesting infographic on CompoundChem.com, which provides a lot of interesting facts on the venom of many insects, including our beloved honey bees.
But hypothetically, and assuming we have no allergy to bee stings that could amplify their lethality, if we suit up in shorts and a t-shirt and get into a hot hive—or one that’s Africanized—just how many stings could we endure before we succumbed to them? The key piece of info on the above graphic is that a lethal dose of venom from a honey bee is 2.8 mg per kilogram of body weight. From that, we can do some figurin’…
Average weight of an adult male in North America: 178 lbs (80.7 kg)
Lethal dose required for average male: 80.7 kg X 2.8 mg = 226 mg
Approximate amount of venom in one honey bee sting: 59 micrograms
Stings per lethal dose: 226 mg / .059 mg = 3831 stings
So given a little bit of data, we conclude it would take 3831 honey bee stings to kill a 178 lb adult male. I personally have below-average weight (155 lbs), making my magic number 3336 stings. The most stings I’ve gotten in a single sitting is around 20-30, so something would have to go terribly wrong for me to reach that critical number. That said, with 50,000 bees in a strong hive, 3500 or more stings is not impossible by any stretch. Moreover, I’m sure horrible things start to happen to the human body well before the lethal dose. There’s also that cautious tale of Mark Turner, who died from a single well-placed sting…all things considered, I think I’ll keep wearing a veil.
Get your personal estimate by inserting your weight in kilograms in the formula below:
_____kg X 2.8 / .059 = ______ stings to receive fatal dose of venom