Several years ago, my husband and I had been out riding on the motorcycle.
We pulled over to get a drink and he felt something inside his shirt sleeve. We thought it was just a bug and he didn’t think anything about it. When we got home, he could still feel something on the inside of his sleeve. He went to take his shirt off and he got stung with the bee. He had been stung with bees many times, but never with a hornet. He told me his skin was burning like fire and within seconds he was having trouble breathing. I had killed the bee, but I hadn’t yet picked it up. I called an ambulance and I pulled out my epipen and jabbed him in the leg. He was still feeling badly when the ambulance arrived. I grabbed the hornet and followed the ambulance to the hospital. I never realized how deadly such a small thing as a bee could be, until we got to the hospital. They had given him another shot of epinephrine on the way to the hospital. I told the doctor that he had been stung by a hornet. They wanted to know where the beehive was and if I had contacted anyone. I had no idea where the bee had been picked up. They suggested my husband stay at the hospital overnight and for the first time in his life, he agreed. That night, he went into cardiac arrest three times. If he hadn’t been in the hospital, that hornet would have made me a widow.