Once Stung Twice Shy

This weekend we set off to go fishing and camping to celebrate Johann's birthday. We picked a camp ground with a lake near by for camping, and the camp site we reserved had 8 or so beautiful tall pine trees offering us lots of shade and a big grass open field behind us.
What we didn't realize was that the area was hit by a HUGE hail storm just a few weeks earlier. About a mile from the camp ground the corn fields looked terrible. Like they had been burned, then the trees on the other side looked bare. We drove into the camp ground and found our site #, but there were no beautiful tall pine trees-just freshly cut stumps, no shade and pine needles all over. We decided to move to the next site over to get some grass. Johann started setting up the tent. The kids got thirsty so we opened the apple juice. We started noticing some bees. There were annoying, but managable. Then more started coming and they were attracted to Rebecca's stroller. We put the net on the stroller but they kept going to her.

This is the conversation I had with Ammon about the bees:
A- "Mom I got stung by a bee."
M-"What did it feel like?"
A- "It hurt a little bit."
M-(too Johann) "If he gets stung he won't say it hurts alittle!"

Simeon has the idea to fill a cup with apple juice and put in the fartest away stump to get the bees to go away from us. Ammon didn't like the idea and he brought the cup back.
A few minutes later Ammon was sitting on his chair with another cup of apple juice swatting at the bees when he starts screaming and grabbing his neck. He had gotten stung right on his neck and it didn't hurt alittle like he thought it would-it hurt ALOT!



We pile the kids into the van, swat the bees out and sit wondering what to do. Ammon fortunatley scratched the stinger out himself, but he was swelling fast. We put a piece of ice on it to slow it down.
The DNR guy drove in right then, so we followed him to ask him what to do. He told us that the bee hives had been knocked down in the hail storm and that the bees had no where to go. A few things the bees like-sun and sugar. We were right in the sun with apple juice. He suggested we move to a camp site with shade (there were only 2 open ones left) and not to have any sugar-especially liquid sugar-so no juice.
We drove down the road to Eldora to get some baking soda to put on the stinger. All the way Ammon is still crying really hard. When I came out of the store he was quiet-Dad had found a way to dry the tears up-orange soda. We also made a stop at Pamida to buy a canopy net to put over our table to keep the bees out.
The saying once bitten (or stung) twice shy is so true. Now even a harmless fly sends him into panic mode, nad he learned that bee stings don't just hurt a little-they hurt ALOT!!