Bee Sting Extra Credit

The name of this report is called “Honey bee sting pain index by body location” and it was written by Michael L Smith. The experiment took place at Cornell University, USA. In this experiment, the question that the Smith was attempting to answer was whether the painfulness of a sting from a honey bee changed depending on where the subject was stung.

Since it is not ethical to cause pain or harm to another individual in order to test a hypothesis or gather information on pain, the author was the only test subject. The subject was fully aware of all of the risks that were associated with the experiment. Preparation for the physical experiment began three months prior to the recorded stingings. The subject was stung everyday, 5 times a day, for those three months so that there were no alterations to his immune system throughout the course of the actual experiment.

For the actual recorded experiment, the subject was also stung five times a day. Each of the stings was rated on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most painful. The first and last stings of the day were on the subject’s forearm. This location was selected because it had a pain rating of 5, so that served as the baseline. Anything more painful was to be rated higher and anything less painful was rated lower. The subject was stung between 9 and 10 in the morning everyday. Each sting was delivered at least five minutes apart; sometimes longer depending on how long the pain from the previous sting lasted. The stings were also done on alternate sides of the body as often as possible.

There was also a specific process for the bees that were used and the process of stinging. Only guard bees were taken from the entrance of a hive. The guard bees were located because of t...

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...s still punctured, there is no poisonous venom injected into them, therefore causing less harm on their immune system.

Another way that these results could have been predicted without anyone getting stung is by looking at the cartoon of the guy whose enlarged body parts represent how many S1 cells are in each area. While it doesn’t necessarily come from the last lecture notes, I felt it was an important principle of sorts to include in this essay. Since scientists know where more of these S1 cells are and they also know that the nociceptor cells are also all over the body, it might be possible for them to hypothesize that areas with more S1 cells would have a greater response and therefore the subject would feel more pain. This way doesn’t require anyone to be hurt in any way, shape or form so while it may not be as accurate, it still has the possibility to work.