The data from this institution indicate that the mortality rate in Spain due to the bite of these hymenopterans is 0.4 per million inhabitants, which means that between 15 and 20 people could die each year from this cause.
But do not be alarmed: bee venom, called apitoxin, is a mixture of formic and hydrochloric acids, sulfur, histamine, proteins and other substances. The amount that enters the body in a bite is negligible –0.0001 grams–, so for most people the consequence is a strong burning that passes after a few hours. A healthy individual who is not hypersensitive to the poison can endure up to twenty-five pecks without suffering beyond the typical discomfort.
However, there are allergic people to whom a single sting can cause anaphylactic shock, with symptoms such as choking, asthma, vomiting, tachycardia, cyanosis and loss of consciousness, even to the point of causing death. The percentage of the population affected by this extreme sensitivity barely reaches 0.05% , although they often do not know it.
As Dr. Arantza Vega, coordinator of the Hymenoptera Allergy Committee of the SEAIC, recalls, “on many occasions, people who suffer a serious allergic reaction of this type are not sent to an allergist and, therefore, do not receive a correct diagnosis. and treatment for their disease, with the risk involved in presenting a new serious reaction in the event of a sting ”.
On the other hand, there are also people, especially beekeepers, who resist stings without problems and who after a time of constant contact with bees end up immunized to the poison. The truth is that apitoxin has been used since ancient times to cure rheumatism and gout. Today there is a type of alternative medicine – apitherapy – that uses bee venom and other products to treat various disorders, although it has not been endorsed by rigorous clinical studies.
