Overreaction to bee stings: can leatrile help?

[Neils]

Some geezer in australia is apparently building a new Titanic, I shall have to drop him a mail and warn him.

[Stromnessbees]

Hang on, this is my thread and it's about bee stings and leatrile, in case nobody has noticed.

... where are the mods when you need them.

[gavin]

I have to confess, alcohol has slightly exerted its toxic influence on my nervous system and threads are just going off at all sorts of tangents with no moderation at all.

[Bumble]

Hmm, immoderate threads. Could prove entertaining!

[gavin]

Well, yes, no comment, other than to say let's leave this one for discussing moderating the effects of stings.

[Bumble]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean my silly comment to kill the thread.

I don't get stung very often because I'm a coward and keep myself well covered, but when it happens I seem to have a delayed reaction to stings. I might notice them when they happen, but no apparent reaction for about 24 hours followed by fierce itching and some swelling.

If I get stings on my fingers they take two or three days to calm down, then a week or so later a fine layer of skin peels away from the site of the bite. I'm not sure if it's because I use antihistamine cream. I haven't tried anything else to try to reduce either the swelling or the itching.

[Mellifera Crofter]

... from the site of the bite.

Bite? Have a look at Chris's avatar - those stingless beauties bite. (Melipona - a tropical American stingless bee. The biologists here may have to correct me - not sure whether it's 'Melipona', 'Meliponinae', or 'Meliponini'.)
Kitta

[gavin]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean my silly comment to kill the thread.

Some threads deserve to die!

Melipona is the genus of these stingless bees so that does it for me. The other names will be other levels of taxonomy above the genus (I think).

[Jon]

The Mayans worked with these stingless bees and there are still some keeping them in the Yucatan peninsula.

[Neils]

Just to sidetrack the thread even more (again!) I was reading a few articles about melipona recently, apparently there's quite a resurgence in keeping them. I'm sure africanised bees play some part, but most of the reasoning given seemed to stem from a renewed interest in traditional cultural practices.