North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran and Donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Tanis,
    I have  been lucky enough not to be stung by a bald faced hornet before,
but got stung a few years back by a yellow jacket with no meat tenderizer on
hand, and it hurt for a week!   If you'll keep some meat tenderizer handy
and get it on a sting quickly, the pain will fade fast.  It literally breaks
down poison, doesn't work on any kind of bee sting, only wasp stings.  When
we go walking in the woods this time of year, I stuff the bottle in my
pocket or put some in a little vial or a twist of aluminum foil. We go out a
lot in autumn to pull the tops off our wild ginseng to no one can find it to
steal it, so there's no telling where a yellow jacket nest might turn up.
Though the last few years, most of the ones we've found were right in the
garden, where we walk all the time.  They never seem to a problem till the
nest population builds up, about now through Sept. It's been so wet here
this year, we haven\t seen as many yellow jackets as usual.
    My mom normally gets a lot of swelling when she is stung by a wasp,
except for the one time I was there and dragged her in the house protesting
all the way and slapped some meat tenderizer on it.  NO swelling.  My dad
insisted she mustn't have been stung, but I saw the irate wasp and the hole
in her arm as I was standing right there.  Donna