How to rank the world's most painful insect stings

 

Bald-faced hornets pack a stinging punch/Jim McCormac

How to rank the world's most painful insect stings

Columbus Dispatch

June 21, 2026

NATURE

Jim McCormac

While pain can be somewhat of an abstract thing, those of us who have been stung by a bald-faced hornet, such as the one pictured with this column, know that it hurts. I’ve been stung by the burly hornets several times. The shock is instant and electric.

One time, I came across one of their football-sized paper nests hanging at eye level in a tree. Ah, thought I – a rare chance to photograph these interesting hornets at close range. Normally, the big nests are much higher in trees. I crept ever closer, firing away at the insects as they came and went.

Suddenly – WHAM! An intense pain! A hornet had stung me on the hand in a drive-by stinging. I quickly retreated to my vehicle but soon grew irritated that a bunch of insects made me back down. Back I went, moving ever closer, capturing the hornets as they entered and exited the nest.

WHAM! Another electric shock by another drive-by stinger and I decided to leave them be. The warriors’ powerful venom had served its purpose – driving off potential enemies.

Incredibly, the sting of the bald-faced hornet is only Level 2 out of 4 (4 being the most painful) on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Here’s how the index’s author, Justin Schmidt, describes the sting of this hornet: “Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.”

If a 2 is equivalent to having your hand smashed in a door, what the heck would a Level 3 or 4 feel like?! We shall see.

Schmidt (1947-2023) was an academic entomologist who specialized in the order of insects known as Hymenoptera. Ants, bees, sawflies and wasps make up its ranks, and as many of us know, the females of many species can sting, often inflicting significant pain.

Ever the analytical academic, Schmidt wanted to objectively measure this pain, and rate it by species. And what better way to do so than to intentionally get stung by as many bees, wasps and their allies as possible, then place the pain levels somewhere on a scale from 1 to 4. During his long career, Schmidt was stung over 1,000 times, by approximately 100 species of Hymenoptera. That’s dedication.

Level 1’s are the mildest stings, such as from tiny bees known as sweat bees. Many species occur in Ohio, and they are important pollinators. Schmidt’s description of a typical sweat bee sting: “Light and ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.”

Some Level 1’s, like the great black wasp, look ferocious but pack no punch. Here’s Schmidt’s sting assessment: “Simple and presumptuous. Your younger sibling just nipped at your pinkie finger.”

The sting pain increases dramatically with each level, as in the Level 2 bald-faced hornet mentioned above. Another common Level 2 in Ohio are western yellowjackets. They’re the ones that can put picnickers in a tizzy when they try to drink from soda cans.

Schmidt: “Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W.C Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.”

I am unaware of any Level 3 or 4 stinging insects in Ohio, and for that, I suppose we can be grateful. We do have an interesting and beautiful species of velvet ant (a type of wasp) known as the “cow killer.” That sounds ominous but is the stuff of urban legend. Schmidt only rated its sting a 1.5.

A western species, Klug’s velvet ant, is a legitimate 3, and Schmidt describes its sting thusly: “Explosive and long-lasting, you sound insane as you scream. Hot oil from the deep fryer spilling all over your hand.”

How could a sting get any worse than that?! Only a handful of species achieves Level 4, including the tarantula hawks of the southern and southwest U.S., the bullet ants of the tropics and the warrior wasp of California and South America.

Here’s Schmidt’s flowery prose regarding a tarantula hawk sting: ”Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has just been dropped into your bubble bath.”

I have seen many bullet ants in the Central American tropics, and we always alert the group to their presence, and with good reason, once one reads Schmidt’s description of their sting: “Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail embedded in your heel.”

Fortunately for us, most stinging insects do not sting unless there is no other resort. The production of venom is biologically costly, and it does not behoove them to waste it. And unless one has dangerous anaphylactic reactions to stings, none of the Ohio stingers are any more than a mild, short-term annoyance.

Next time a yellowjacket nails you, be grateful it wasn’t a bullet ant or tarantula hawk.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

A great black wasp is all bark and no bite/Jim McCormac

Dickcissel, along with a few photo notes

 

A Dickcissel, freshly landed in a Canada wild lettuce, which served as one of several regular singing perches for the little cardinalid (this species is in the same family as the familiar Northern Cardinal).

In this next shot, he has summited the plant and is delivering his mechanical-sounding onomatopoeic song: dik-dik-cis-cis-cis!

Like so many other denizens of the Great Plains prairies, Dickcissels reach the eastern limits of their breeding range in Ohio and occur in varying numbers each year.
Ross County, Ohio, June 21, 2026.

PHOTO NOTE: More reach is a very desirable thing when it comes to bird photography, and to that end I acquired Canon's amazing (but pricey) EF 800mm f/5.6 prime lens about a decade ago. This lens has been worth its weight in gold and enabled me to obtain scores of shots that I could not have gotten with a lesser lens. It has its detriments, I suppose, other than price, the main one being its weight. The 800 weighs about 10 pounds. No one is going to be handholding this beast for long, so a very stout tripod is a must. I use a Gitzo, along with a Wemberly head. That combo probably adds five or so additional pounds. Once one is used to carrying this rig, it isn't a big deal, though, and I routinely cover serious ground on foot with it.

For these shots, I used Canon's 1.4x teleconverter, which gives the lens a whopping 1120mm of reach. You can be a long way from your subject and still get high-quality keepers. But it comes with a cost: the loss of one stop (the lens' base aperture goes from f/5.6 to f/8). So, plenty of light is desirable, if not a must, when using this combination. And it doesn't work football field length miracles, but it does allow me to be far enough away from my subjects that they often ignore me and behave naturally, which is what I want. Also, the further one is from the subject, the harder it becomes to get tack-sharp images. The teleconverter also can create more softness to the subject, which is exacerbated the further away one is.

I'd love to play with Canon's new RF-mount f/8 1200mm lens, but then I'd surely want it. And I might have to sell my vehicle to do so. It costs about $23,000, new. I cannot imagine having an additional 400mm in reach beyond the base 800mm in one lens, and if the 1200 is like all other Canon telephotos, I am sure that it is crazy sharp - sharper than my 800 + 1.4x converter = 11200mm combo is.

Rose Pogonia, a beautiful orchid, and two photographic tactics to document it

 

Brown's Lake Bog, a relict kettle bog in Wayne County, Ohio. It is owned by the Ohio Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. There isn't much open water left. The natural process of ecological succession dooms these interesting habitats eventually. Its ultimate fate is to become forest, following the shrubby succession that we see in the foreground. The treelet at the front left is one of our most interesting and beautiful bog plants, Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix). Were it not infused with urushiol, the same itchy substance in Poison Ivy, I have little doubt that this sumac would be sold in the nursery trade.

I first saw this place probably 30+ years ago, and it's probably been 15-20 years since I last visited. Shauna and I made the trip up last Monday, June 15. There's lots of rare plants in this bog - indeed, nearly everything in Brown's Lake Bog is rare, even if not formally state-listed as is the protagonist of this post.

As always, click the photo to enlarge.

Mid-June is the time to catch Rose Pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides) at the peak of its glory. The little orchid is listed as threatened by the Ohio DNR's Division of Natural Areas, the Department's botanical and ecological agency. There are probably hundreds of these orchids blooming in a good year.

We were there literally at the crack of dawn, when the light is probably best for botanical photography. A good thing, too, as it became a bright sunny day and those are terrible conditions for plant photography, except at the very beginning or end of the day.

The only tricks to making the shot above were 1) going prostrate on the boardwalk to get on my subject's level (very important in plant photography) and 2) finding a subject largely free of immediate background subjects that would create a cluttered look and minimize the focus on my target. I was - as nearly always these days - using my Canon R5. The lens is Canon's amazing 180mm f/3.5 macro, possibly the sharpest lens Canon has ever made. My settings were f/11, ISO 200, and 1/13 second exposure.

The shutter speed may seem slow, and it probably wouldn't work if one was handholding the camera. It'd be hard to impossible to get sharp images. Especially with the old, discontinued 180mm macro lens, which is heavy and lacks image stabilization. But unless I am using flash with this setup, and that's primarily for insects, I almost always work this rig off of a tripod. That's what I did here, using my tiny Oben CIT-1000 tripod. When its legs are splayed out, the tripod is flat on the ground, and your camera rig isn't much higher

Once I have a composition that I like, I fire away using the camera's two-second timer delay feature. That way, nothing is touching the camera when it fires, eliminating any possible human-caused movement. Of course, if the plant moves due to breezes, the shot will not be sharp. That's another reason to be afield very early, when wind is often absent or far less than it might be as the day progresses.

This is the same plant as above but using black velvet. This technique can be overdone, but it is cool on special occasions such as this. I use 8.5 x 11-inch sheets of black velvet with sticky backs. I glue them to cardboard of the same dimensions, for rigidity. Then merely hold or otherwise place the velvet behind the subject, which can create a dramatic visual effect as well as eliminate any and all background distractions while doing no harm to the plants.

Settings will always vary from the same shot without the velvet, due to changes in how the camera's sensor interprets the light with and without the velvet. In general, I prefer wider apertures with plants - anywhere from f/4 to f/7.1, typically - but velvet allows for the use of narrow apertures as there is no background clutter that would create a lot of undesirable mess behind the subject if very small apertures were used.

For this shot, I chose f/16 while keeping the ISO at 200. This dropped the shutter speed to a very slow 1/6 second, but who cares what the shutter speed is as long as the subject isn't moving. Shutter speed, at least under good plant photography conditions, is the least important setting in my opinion. I have taken many plant shots at multi-second exposures (up to 10 seconds!) and they are tack sharp. Wind, even mild breezes, is not the plant photographer's friend and windless periods are the best time to shoot plants.

Plant photography would seem easy on its face, as they don't move. It is certainly easier than shooting a Chimney Swift in flight, or a hummingbird darting around a flower patch. Nonetheless, making good botanical imagery involves some patience, thought, and special camera techniques.

House Centipede

 

Here's my CCC (Cute Cuddly Critter) of the week. I found this House Centipede (Scutigera coleoptrata) in my garage the other night, and it is probably the largest one that I've seen. At least four inches in length, counting the legs. It's hard to tell which end is which, but in the full body shot, the head is at the bottom. In the other photo, we're looking right into its face, and you can see the venom claws.

This species is endemic to the Mediterranean region but now occurs nearly worldwide and is typically associated with houses and other such structures. Centipedes are venomous and some species can issue nasty bites, but not this one. It does have a venom gland and injects venom into prey via its forcipules (venom claws), but it isn't harmful to people - if they can even penetrate skin, although this big boy might be able to. But they are nothing to worry about, although centipedes certainly wig some people out.

With some 15 sets of legs, a House Centipedes glides like a living feather across the walls. One at full tilt can cover nearly 1.5 feet a second! So, when you're awakened by the soft brush of a feather on your cheek, only to discover it is one of these centipedes, have no fear - it can't hurt you And they are working to rid your house of various insects and spiders.

As always, click the image to enlarge

Birds of Cedar Bog: talk, followed by a tour of the bog

On Saturday, June 20, I am giving a presentation on the breeding birds of Cedar Bog, followed by a trip around the bog's (actually a fen) boardwalk. The event starts at 9 am and is over around noon. My presentation will be geared around the breeding species of the bog - a very diverse assemblage for a 450-acre site.

While the walk may veer into a natural history free-for-all - there is so much interesting ecology, rare plant species, and unusual animal life such as skinks, endangered Elfin Skimmer dragonflies, and much more - I will do my best to prioritize birds. It should be a blast, and we will see lots of stuff.

I believe it is $5.00 per adult, $4.00 for children, and kids 5 and under are free. Hope to see you there, and complete details are RIGHT HERE.

Northern Cardinal nest in backyard

 

This Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) has shown great taste in selecting a particularly showy spot: a thick liana of Trumper-creeper (Campsis radicans) vines only about two feet from my kitchen window. I should say "cardinals" as even though the female does all of the work regarding nest construction, the male assists with site selection, and feeds her while she is engaged in construction.

Here she is, busily weaving together her nest. This shot was made yesterday morning (June 11, 2026), and it's been about a week since I first noticed the commencement of construction. The nest appears to be nearly complete. While the nest is in a difficult area to avoid regular disturbances, I will do everything within my power to see that they have success.

While cardinal nests don't look like much at a glance, they are more complex than it appears. There are four distinct layers: a very rough twiggy outer layer, a loose leafy zone, grapevine strips, and a soft inner bowl of fine grasses. Interestingly, the rough-looking cup is not directly anchored to the branchy substrate, it is more or less just wedged into place.

As cardinals can nest quite early in spring, I imagine this is a second nesting.

A male Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) performs his "Dracula" courtship display to a seemingly disinterested female. Cowbirds must be given credit for their interesting courtships, and this activity, if successful, leads to the production of cowbird eggs.

An ever-vigilant female cowbird, scanning her surroundings for potential host nests. As I am sure you know, cowbirds are parasitic in that the female dumps an egg(s) in host nests of unrelated species. Many species can serve as hosts, and the Northern Cardinal is a common victim/host.

Today, I was out back with a contractor doing some work for me, and we were about 30 feet from the nest. Suddenly a female cowbird flew in and landed on the ground, perhaps 10 feet from the nest. She then walked over to the base of the Trumpet-creeper vine and flew up to the nest. She didn't stay long, and after her departure I took a quick look within and she had not laid an egg. However, the cardinal has not yet laid any eggs, and as I understand it cowbirds mostly dump their egg (sometimes multiples) in nests that already have host eggs. My hunch is that she'll be back after some cardinal eggs appear.

This may be a case in which I will feel the need to intervene. While Brown-headed Cowbirds are not "invasive" or "nonnative" they have expanded their range tremendously. Why? Us. People. Cowbirds originally were tightly tied to bison herds, which they stayed with and depended upon for food. The cowbirds feed on insects and other fare disturbed by the bison's feet. One still sees this behavior, although cows are now the herding animals that they follow. When we opened up the eastern deciduous forest region, cowbirds aggressively pioneered new and favorable habitats and learned to exploit cattle.

As bison herds are quite nomadic and often not in one place for extended periods, the cowbirds evolved their nest parasitism habits. This freed the adult birds from the lengthy process of parental care. Just let someone else do the dirty work for you. Unfortunately, cowbirds are hard on their hosts. The young cowbirds often get a jumpstart on host species and outcompete the rightful young. While perhaps playing god a bit, I want "my" cardinals to have the greatest possible chance of successful reproduction. 

Learn about the hairy-tailed mole hiding in Ohio woods

 

The bizarre hairy-tailed mole, digger extraordinaire/Jim McCormac

Learn about the hairy-tailed mole hiding in Ohio woods

Columbus Dispatch

June 7, 2026

NATURE

Jim McCormac

Insofar as I am aware, this is the first time that the hairy-tailed mole has gotten ink in the Columbus Dispatch. Not surprising, given the strange mammal’s predilection for subterranean haunts.

Indeed, I would be surprised if many readers are aware that this odd beast even exists. There are three species of moles in Ohio, and only the common and widespread eastern mole is known to most. This is the little mammal that tunnels in your yard, leaving telltale ridges of dirt in its wake.

Eastern moles prefer open country, while the protagonist of this column, the hairy-tailed mole, favors wooded habitats. While inspecting mole tails is not perhaps the easiest task, these two species are easily separated by this feature. One has a furred tail; the other does not.

The holy grail for mole-seekers is the utterly bizarre star-nosed mole. This alien-looking creature looks like a sea anemone was welded to the tip of its snout. It occurs primarily in the northeast corner of Ohio and favors wet sites.

When I finally clap eyes on one, it’ll make the news, at least in this publication. Hairy-tailed moles are common in appropriate habitats, and that means they are most frequent in eastern Ohio where forests are still commonplace. It probably is in larger forested tracts in central Ohio, such as Blendon Woods and Highbanks metro parks.

Prior to European settlement, the hairy-tailed mole was certainly the most common mole in the state, as Ohio was about 95% woodland in those days. While I would like to think I am a seasoned outdoorsman, natural philosopher and wildlife photographer with many decades of experience, I can report that finding and photographing a mole is not a simple task. And regarding the image that accompanies this column, I cheated a bit.

Moles have extremely high metabolisms and occasionally seem to just detonate. Three times now, I have come across dead hairy-tailed moles that were fresh as could be, laying on the ground. Without benefit of an autopsy, I suspect they just imploded, perhaps victims of a heart attack. Not one to let an opportunity go to waste, I dug a small tunnel in the leafy humus and positioned the mole in the tunnel, as if it was just emerging from the ground. That produced the image that you see here.

But my staged photo op is accurate. Hairy-tailed moles spend much time in the soil’s upper strata and frequently forage in the leaf litter. Two years ago, while leading a field trip in the vast Shawnee State Forest in Scioto County, I caught a glimpse of one scuffling through leafy litter and managed to pounce and grab it so my group could ooh and aah over the weird mammal.

After a brief learning experience, we released it unharmed. It takes a close inspection to truly appreciate a mole’s incredible adaptations for a fossorial (burrowing) lifestyle. An elongated tubular body helps with efficiently slipping through narrow tunnels and fissures.

There are no external ears to impede progress. Their forelimbs are rotated to facilitate digging, and my oh my, those “hands”!

Imagine if you had feet larger than your head with toenails as long as your legs. An incredibly silky pelage sheds dirt like water hitting wax. When most of your time is spent in subterranean gloom, there’s little need for eyes, and those have devolved to tiny pinpricks.

Moles essentially see only light and dark – they are nearly blind. They compensate for sightlessness with incredibly acute tactile sensors known as Elmer’s organs. The elongate snout is beset with these, which allow the mole to feel its food.

To wax anthropomorphic, a hunting mole is a raging beast, a mammalian psychopath storming through the soil’s upper strata overpowering, killing and eating virtually anything that it can capture. It’s probably a good thing for us that they are only 6 inches long and weigh only 2 ounces. Were moles the size of badgers, we’d possibly be in a heap of trouble.

Most of their food is worms, beetle grubs, fly larvae, slugs and other such invertebrate fare. Moles are voracious eaters, and captives have been documented consuming three times their bodyweight in earthworms daily.

In prime habitats loaded with prey, they likely eat even more than that. As a point of comparison, a 180-pound man would have to eat 720 McDonald’s quarter pounders daily to keep up. Dr. Ornish would disapprove.

Even though hardly anyone knows anything about moles, or that they even exist, these mammals are incredibly important ecosystem engineers. In addition to being major mitigators preventing overpopulation of various invertebrate populations, their labyrinths of tunnels are used by many other organisms. These include mice, shrews, voles, snakes and salamanders.

Just because something is mostly out of sight and out of mind doesn’t mean it isn’t important.

Further ahead

I am giving a pictorial talk based on my book, "Wild Ohio: The Best of Our Natural Heritage," for the Worthington Public Library on June 17 at 7 p.m. at the Griswold Center, 777 North High St. in Worthington.

To register, visit worthingtonlibraries.org

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at jimmccormac.blogspot.com.