What are the odds of being killed by a bee, wasp, or hornet sting?
Evidence quality 4.75/5
Eight-dimension review score against the quality rubric . Each dimension scored 1–5.
- D1 Source grounding
- 5/5
- D2 Source authority
- 5/5
- D3 Arithmetic
- 5/5
- D4 Uncertainty
- 5/5
- D5 Scope
- 5/5
- D6 Prose
- 5/5
- D7 Perception honesty
- 4/5
- D8 Caveat completeness
- 4/5
Lifetime probability · lifetime, US adult
1 in 78,927
0.001% lifetime chance
Most people overestimate this.
range 1 in 111,111 to 1 in 55,556
● your factors — click this risk ▾ to reveal
≈ As likely as
Perceived
We don’t yet have a rigorous survey that isolates “fear of being killed by a bee, wasp, or hornet sting” from the much broader category of entomophobia or stinging-insect avoidance. Anecdotally, the bee occupies a strange place in risk perception: familiar, small, and culturally cute (honeybees especially), so the perceived fatal risk runs well below the actual number for most people. Even those who actively dislike wasps tend to file the danger as “painful” rather than “potentially lethal,” unless they already know they’re allergic.
Rough estimate: most people guess essentially zero outside of known allergies
Source: editorial intuition, not polled
Actual
~72 hornet, wasp, and bee sting deaths per year, United States
US total population
Show derivation
Uses the CDC NCHS published average of 72 deaths per year from hornet, wasp, and bee stings (ICD-10 code X23, “Contact with hornets, wasps and bees”) over the most recent fully reported decade (2011-2021), divided by a US population of ~335 million, then compounded over 59 years of remaining adult life: 1 - (1 - 72/335000000)^59 ≈ 1.27 × 10^-5. The 2000-2017 average was lower (62/year); the uncertainty band reflects the plausible range across reporting windows and the upward drift in recent years.
Caveats: This is a population-level average over all US adults. Actual risk is highly het…
This is a population-level average over all US adults. Actual risk is highly heterogeneous: individuals with a known systemic allergy to hymenoptera venom face a much higher per-sting fatality probability than the general population, and occupational groups with sustained outdoor exposure (beekeepers, landscapers, roofers, agricultural workers) accumulate orders of magnitude more sting events per year. Conversely, an indoor-dwelling adult with no known venom allergy faces something close to zero. Note also that roughly half of fatal sting reactions, per the allergy literature, occur in people with no prior history of systemic reaction — so “I’ve been stung before and was fine” is a weaker reassurance than it sounds.
Risks at similar odds
Other risks with roughly the same likelihood — useful for calibration.
Sting anaphylaxis
What are the odds that a bee or wasp sting will trigger anaphylactic shock requiring an epinephrine injection?
Swallowed bee/wasp
What are the odds of accidentally swallowing a live bee or wasp and suffering a life-threatening airway reaction?
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Pick challenger
The CDC’s National Vital Statistics System records an average of 72 US deaths per year from hornet, wasp, and bee stings over the most recent fully reported decade (2011-2021), filed under ICD-10 code X23, “Contact with hornets, wasps and bees.” Spread across the US population and compounded across a remaining adult lifetime, that comes to a lifetime risk of about 1 in 79,000 — small in absolute terms, but not at all negligible. The memorable anchor: bees, wasps, and hornets kill roughly two orders of magnitude more Americans per year than sharks do worldwide, and yet the cultural fear budget runs almost entirely the other way.
The perceived-vs-actual gap on this one is driven almost entirely by familiarity and cuteness. Honeybees in particular benefit from a “boring, small, fuzzy, makes honey” coefficient that pushes the felt risk well below the recorded mortality number, while sharks — which are vastly less lethal in population terms — benefit from cinematic compounding. None of this is unusual; the same pattern recurs with cars vs planes, dogs vs sharks, and household stairs vs almost anything that gets news coverage. We mark the perceived side of this page as intuition rather than survey, because no rigorous recent poll isolates “fear of being killed by a bee or wasp” from the much broader category of entomophobia. If you know of one, please suggest a fix.
The number is also unusually non-uniform across the population. Risk concentrates sharply in two groups: people with a known systemic allergy to hymenoptera venom, and people with sustained occupational outdoor exposure (beekeepers, landscapers, roofers, agricultural workers) who simply accumulate orders of magnitude more stings per year than the average adult. For those readers, the population number above is a substantial underestimate of personal risk. There’s also a less comfortable finding from the allergy literature: per Golden’s review, roughly half of fatal sting reactions occur in people with no prior history of a systemic reaction, so “I’ve been stung before and was fine” is a weaker filter on personal risk than it intuitively feels.
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
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[1] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) / National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) / MMWR — QuickStats: Number of Deaths from Hornet, Wasp, and Bee Stings Among Males and Females — National Vital Statistics System, United States, 2011-2021
QuickStats: Number of Deaths from Hornet, Wasp, and Bee Stings Among Males and Females — National Vital Statistics System, United States, 2011-2021- Statistic
788 US deaths from hornet, wasp, and bee stings over 2011-2021 (average 72 per year)- Excerpt
“"During 2011-2021, a total of 788 deaths from hornet, wasp, and bee stings occurred (an average of 72 deaths per year). The annual number of deaths ranged from 59 (2012) to 89 (2017). Overall, 84% of deaths occurred among males." ”
- Source data from
- 2023-07-07
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- CDC NCHS reports an average of 72 US deaths per year (2011-2021) under ICD-10 code X23 (“Contact with hornets, wasps and bees”), drawn from death certificates in the National Vital Statistics System. Divided by US population (~335M) and compounded over 59 years of remaining adult life gives ~1 in 79,000 lifetime. The earlier 2000-2017 reporting window averaged 62/year, so the uncertainty band brackets both periods.
- Independence
- This is a death-certificate-based count via NCHS / NVSS. It is the same underlying ICD-10 data stream that WISQARS exposes interactively.
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[2] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) / MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report — QuickStats: Number of Deaths from Hornet, Wasp, and Bee Stings, Among Males and Females — National Vital Statistics System, United States, 2000-2017
QuickStats: Number of Deaths from Hornet, Wasp, and Bee Stings, Among Males and Females — National Vital Statistics System, United States, 2000-2017See all 2 Likelier entries citing this source →
- Statistic
1,109 US deaths from hornet, wasp, and bee stings over 2000-2017 (annual average 62)- Excerpt
“"During 2000-2017, a total of 1,109 deaths from hornet, wasp, and bee stings occurred, for an annual average of 62 deaths. Deaths ranged from a low of 43 in 2001 to a high of 89 in 2017. Approximately 80% of the deaths were among males." ”
- Source data from
- 2019-07-26
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- Used as a longer-window corroboration of the NCHS 2011-2021 figure. The 18-year mean of 62/year is slightly lower than the more recent 11-year mean of 72/year, consistent with a small upward drift; we use 72 as the central estimate and use the 2000-2017 average as the lower bound of the uncertainty range.
- Independence
- Same underlying NVSS death-certificate data stream as the 2011-2021 QuickStats; this is a temporal cross-check, not an independent count.
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[3] Immunology and Allergy Clinics of North America / Golden DBK (NIH PubMed Central) — Insect Sting Anaphylaxis
Insect Sting AnaphylaxisSee all 2 Likelier entries citing this source →
- Statistic
≥50 fatal sting reactions per year in the US; ~3% of adults report systemic allergic reactions to stings- Excerpt
“"Systemic allergic reactions are reported by up to 3% of adults, and almost 1% of children have a medical history of severe sting reactions … At least 50 fatal sting reactions occur each year in the United States … Half of all fatal reactions occur with no history of previous sting reactions." ”
- Source data from
- 2007-05-01
- Accessed
- 2026-04-11 · archived copy
- Calculation
- Used as an independent allergy-epidemiology corroboration of the order of magnitude (50+ deaths per year) and as the source for the heterogeneity story: roughly half of fatal sting reactions occur in people with no prior history of systemic reaction, which means “I’m not allergic” is a weaker filter on personal risk than most readers assume.
- Independence
- Methodologically independent of NCHS death-certificate counts: Golden’s review draws from clinical allergy literature and venom-IgE serology studies rather than ICD-10 death codes.