Do bullet ants have the most painful sting?

It lists pain on a scale from one to four and unsurprisingly the bullet ant tops the charts. Level 4: bullet ant, tarantula hawk wasp; Level 3: paper wasp, harvester ant; Level 2: honey bee, yellow jacket wasp, bald-faced hornet; Level 1.5: bullhorn acacia ant; Level 1: fire ant, sweat bee “Level four you don’t want to know,” explains Dr Schmidt. read more

But there was no existing scale to measure the pain of insect stings. Thus was born the "Schmidt Pain Scale for Stinging Insects." It was a four-point system, anchored by the well-known sting of a honey bee (rating a two), something people all over the world could be familiar with. read more

That helped the palate, but it didn't do anything for the pain. The bullet ant and the tarantula hawk wasp [the only other bug to reach a 4 on the pain scale] are like day and night. You can't draw much of a comparison, other than they both really, really hurt. The ant is a social animal that lives in colonies of 1,000 to 3,000 individuals. read more