So there I was, merily pedalling along the longer atherton loop, when a honey bee rear-ended my hand with an approximate impact velocity of 30 mph.

I say “rear-ended” because although the bee was most likely flying head-on in my direction, he left his rear-end behind in the flesh of my finger.

Heh. “Bee hind”. Heh.

Anyway. I’ve always understood that you don’t use tweezers to remove the stinger because you don’t want to squeeze more poison into the wound. This may be true; but this doesn’t mean you should leave the stinger in place either. I left my finger untouched and cycled all the way home before attempting to remove the stinger, and this turns out to be unwise. Apparently, the muscles in the aft-quarters will continue to pump. In my case, I couldn’t stop cycling – I had no tools of any kind with me, or my glasses for that matter. If you find yourself in this situation, the best thing to do is to try and brush off the stinger in a sideways motion, perpendicular to the sting. 

I didn’t do that, and by the time I got home, my finger was quite swollen below the ring (it was my ring finger!) and rather sore.