I swallowed a bee once while riding my bicycle to work. Stung me in the
back of my throat. Since I worked in a hospital, and was only a couple of
miles from there, already at speed with my heart rate up, I figured my best
option was to keep going, hoping my airway didn't obstruct before I got
there. Went straight up to my department (anesthesia), grabbed the first
anesthesiologist I saw and told him what had happened. We went straight
down to the ENT clinic and they found a bee sting sticking in the back of my
throat behind the uvula. I felt terrible for hours. A bee can certainly
bring down a bikie. I have serious doubts about an airplane, though.

OTOH, I heard once of a 172 that was nearly brought down when the pilots
opened the air vents after takeoff and out came a swarm of angry wasps that
had nested in the air vent intake while the plane was on the ground. I
think that was in "I learned about flying from that" 25 years ago or so.
Ouch!

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)


wrote in message
oups.com...

Dan Simper wrote:
I heard that a collision between a plane and a bee can be
devastating.

Is that true ?

I have a hard time imagining a common scenario where this could
happen. A bee hitting an airplane will usually just go Splat!

A few years ago I had the misfortune of riding my motorcycle through
a swarm of large bumble bees at 85 mph. The impacts were a little
painful, but certainly not dangerous. The worst part was having to
spend about 15 min. digging fried bee goo out of the cooling fins on my
cylinders.

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)