When I lived up north I would get stung on average about 3 times a summer. I have an allergic reaction to bee stings so would always immediately drop whatever I was doing and go take Benadryl and fall asleep. We have lived in Florida for 9 years and I have yet to experience a bee sting. I don't know if I'm just lucky and should knock on wood, or if there's just a different type of bee here.

The bees that usually got me were the honey bees or yellow jackets. Their sting was fierce and the area would immediately start to balloon. Here in Florida I see black bees and wasps, but nothing that I can actually say compares to the honey bee. Now my friend at Taming of the Band-Aid knows a thing or two about bees. In fact, he has some gorgeous pix of a paper wasp and a great black wasp but I haven't seen anything mentioned about honey bees. Anyway, I choose to believe that even if they do exist on the Gulf Coast they just don't like our property. That way I can continue to walk in the grass barefoot without a second thought about getting stung.

The reason I go through this story is because I was reading an article the other day that talked about how to deal with bee stings. Of course the best suggestion is to avoid bees, closely followed by wearing insect repellant. Don't swat the suckers if they do decide to check you out and be sure not to wear that new perfume you just purchased in case the bee happens to like it. If you do get stung, run cold water on the area. To help with the pain, apply a paste of 1 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp of water. Here's to hoping there are no honey bees. Happy Florida Gardening.