No Mutants Allowed

Wasps and bees sting according to some "triggers", swift movements may trigger stings, physical pressure to the body *will* trigger stings. A bumblebee once crept into my brothers ear, to explore. He cried, ran to dad, who proceeded to poke the bumblebee with a pencil

Frightening it, pressuring it, and physically pushing it deeper and deeper inside my crying brothers head. Thanks dad. No sting! Eventually, the bumblebee turned around, and simply crept back out, and flew away.

Almost as if completing a circle, my brother *did* sit on a bumblebee. Now a big fat adult, he pushed it into the pillows on a garden chair, got stung in the ass as soon as he touched pillow, and the bumblebee flew away

I am awfully terrified (irrationality so) of anything that flies and stings. But bumblebees are very chill. I can tolerate them being closer to me than other flying stingers.

I like to bill myself as some sort of dr. animal, but wasps can really test me. I've pushed annoyed wasps away, without incident, using slow movements, "imitating" the range of motion of a branch waving in the wind, for example

Holy shit, did that work?
I could never try it as I immediately try to distance myself from wasps and yellow jackets.

I've held a wasp, on the bus, when I was a teen, to release it outside of the bus, and I one time fed a wasp ham, which was super-adorable, watching it cut the ham and fly away with it - but they do spook me. Sometimes they'll wanna expore your nostrils and stuff, and that is crossing the line

I have also run for my life from wasps, when a friend stepped into a ground hornet nest. He was stung multiple times, I wasn't touched once, despite them chasing me. I heard them! Very surreal experience, but yeah, ran a path, straight out of the forest. They stopped chasing at the trees edge

That's some form of bravery I can't possess. Other animals like snakes and bears, sure I am "scared of" but I can handle situations dealing with them. Tiny fliers with stingers? I panic. It's got to be something akin to phobia.

Look at it like this - wasps don't really get that you're even a living thing. When they get up in your nostrils or ears, they're checking "cavities" for hidden insects they can eat. By not doing snappy, predator/bird-like movements, you can push them away, physically. It's super unnerving though...

I had a similar experience with yellow jackets. Group ahead of mine in a hiking trip disturbed a nest. They crawled into every opening in my clothes and under my backpack straps and everything, hair included. They didn't give a fuck.

Oh yeah, if you disturb their nest, they go full attack. My friend ran deeper into the woods, plus he was the guy planting his foot through their home, they were merciless, I heard him scream He came up, and had hornets stuck *in* his fuzzy sweatter, stinging him relentlessly, again and again

I have a needle phobia so any bug with stingers makes me anxious.

I've been attacked by mud wasps on a number of occasions; for those that don't know, mud wasps release a pheromone that causes the entire nest to swarm you whenever they're threatened. They're also twice as big as your average hornet.
It's happened to me so often that needles are more of a mild inconvenience to me at this point.

Basically what I'm saying is that you should face your fears by irritating mud wasps.

I also have a phobia of needles, probably why bees and wasps freak me out so bad because they're hard to track and if spooked they can get aggressive.