Something You May Not Want to Know

There is a fellow named Schmidt who has produced a pain index for different stinging insects of the order Hymenoptera. Apparently he has been stung by most of them, and did us the good service of rating the severity of the pain. On this scale, the honeybee is a 2.0, between the sweat bee (1.0) and the bullet ant (4.0+).

Here's the scale on Wikipedia.

The most painful stinging insect in the United States is apparently the Tarantula Hawk. I think I've seen those before, mainly in the local deserts. Fortunately they're not aggressive at all. Here's how one researcher described the pain: ""To me, the pain is like an electric wand that hits you, inducing an immediate, excruciating pain that simply shuts down one’s ability to do anything, except, perhaps, scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations. The pain for me lasted only about three minutes, during which time the sting area was insensitive to touch, i.e., a pencil point poked near the sting resulted only in a dull deep pressure pain." (From DesertUsa).

You should also check out descriptions of the Bullet Ant's Sting from Wikipedia.