Beware of Carpenter Bees!
I was speaking to a friend of mine that recently moved to Cambodia and we keep in touch with what is going on in one another's life. He was talking about how he is enjoying the island that he now lives on and I was talking about how I have no idea where that island even is. About 10 years ago I stopped moving around and honestly feel as though my sense of adventure kind of disappeared. I don't really go anywhere anymore and I don't have a problem with that. Some people might find it boring but bro, I have had a life filled with so much adventure in the past that I feel like Bilbo Baggins in that I just want to get away from everyone and call it a wrap. You can keep your adventure, I've already been "there and back again."
One of the things that I acquired in all of my travels was quite a bit of knowledge about things that can hurt you, and mostly this was from getting hurt by them. One of those things was a rather harmless looking thing that is actually quite harmful and I know this because they got a hold of me and hurt me, twice!
Introducing the carpenter bee, or as it is sometimes referred to as a carpenter beetle. These creatures are not as well known as bumblebees but they do look an awful lot like them.
The mostly just buzz around some piece of wood or as it is here in South East Asia, bamboo. They hollow out a place and this becomes their nest and they live in there.
For the most part they are not at all interested in interacting with humans but they are a bit territorial. They are not as vicious as wasps or hornets and they don't seem to go out of their way to fuck you up if you get even slightly close to them. Their territorial nature consists of the hole in whatever it is that they are living in and that is it.
The only way to really get hurt by these guys is to actually put your hand or butt or whatever on the entrance to their little domicile and that is what happened to me two times since I have lived in Asia.
Two times probably doen'st seem that bad considering that I have lived over here more than 20 years but the pain of this bite is so horrible that I feel the need to warn people even though my last run in was a very long time ago.
It is my understanding that this bee is quite prevalent in Eastern USA, but we have them over here in the jungles as well.
In my story I was mending a bamboo fence in the jungle where I was working at the time. I kept hearing a buzzing sound emitting from the fence I was working on and was curious about what it was. Man oh man do I wish I had just not let the curiosity get the best of me because as I was turning a piece of bamboo in my hand I all of a sudden felt a striking pain and didn't even see the culprit. I thought that I had perhaps just accidentally cut myself. The initial pain was nothing compared to what happened later though.
As the hours ticked by the poison or venom or whatever made its way though my hand and soon my hand started to swell up, itch, and soon after I lost the ability to make a fist or even use that hand for anything.
These are obviously not my hands because I prefer yellow finger nail polish and never use pink but the results were similar. The swelling is really painful and there really isn't much you can do about it other than take a anti-histamine and then wait. Doing anything in your life that involves using your hand is both time consuming and painful and the swelling for me took about a week before it was done with. All the while the hand is really sensitive and doing normal things like reaching into your pocket to get your car keys is really agonizing.
I find it funny that as far as carpenter bees are concerned the females are the only ones that can hurt you... just like humans... joking of course.
The males don't even have stingers and are considerably smaller than the females who do have stingers.
While the way that a person's body is going to react to a sting will vary depending on you, for the most part these stings aren't going to be deadly unless you are one of those people who is highly allergic to stings from insects. If you are one of those people you probably have an epi-pen on you at all times.
For me, I guess I am more allergic than most because my swelling stayed that way for about a week before it went away. In that time I also shed my skin like a lizard in the affected area.
It is actually really easy to not get stung by carpenter bees, you just need to stay away from their nests. This is a lesson that I learned the hard was and when I ended up getting stung again I was more upset with myself than anything else. I was particularly angry because I knew what I was in store for and yes, the recovery time was about the same the second time around.
These bees do not swarm, they do not go out looking for trouble. They have no interest in landing on you or chasing you away. You have to be particularly persistent in your putting of your hands near the nest for them to do anything to you at all and well, this should be easy enough. It only happened to me because I couldn't see the hole in the bamboo when I was handling it. They do seem to really enjoy living in bamboo so if you encounter some of that in the wild be really careful. Especially for foreigners, bamboo is something exotic and for some stupid-ass reason we feel compelled to pick it up even if we don't intend to do anything with it.
The bee is not a bad creature, they are just protecting their nest. They do benefit nature immensely by pollinating plants and therefore, just like honey bees, or other such pollinating insects, it is important that they exist. So don't just go a runnin' around killing them for sport.
I would keep my distance if I were you though. To this day I am a bit afraid of small holes I see on bamboo or any piece of wood because that sting is not something you are going to soon forget!