Fear of Wasps
Spheksophobia
Spheksophobia is a fear of wasps or of being stung by one, described as relatively common, and its Wikipedia article runs to three sentences. Two of those three sentences are about where it sits in relation to other fears.
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What the encyclopedia entry contains
Wikipedia's article gives the fear of wasps, or of wasp stings, as spheksophobia, calls it a relatively common specific phobia, and notes that it is similar to the fear of bees, which goes by apiphobia or melissophobia. The hierarchy it gives runs:
- spheksophobia, wasps
- entomophobia, insects
- zoophobia, animals
That is the whole article. A condition described as relatively common has, in the largest encyclopedia in the world, a definition and a position in a hierarchy, and no cause, no prevalence, no case and no treatment.
The hierarchy is not useless. It records that nobody treats a wasp fear as its own category: it is a subtype of a subtype, and a clinician meeting one would code a specific phobia of the animal type.
Why the sting arrives unsignalled
The most useful description in the sources is from a gardening book published in 2006. A few episodes of harvesting ripe peaches and plums and being viciously stung by the insects hiding inside the splitting fruit, it says, is more than enough to trigger a bout of spheksophobia.
That is a precise account of how this fear is acquired and it explains why it differs from a fear of bees. A bee is visible and is doing something else; a person can see one and move away. A wasp in a split peach is not visible until the hand closes on it, and the sting arrives with no warning and no provocation the person can identify.
A fear built on an unsignalled event behaves differently from a visible threat, and the avoidance it produces is broader, because there is nothing specific to avoid.
What the dating site post says
Wiktionary's second quotation is a post from a dating website in December 2006, headed that it is nearly summer and therefore spheksophobia season. The writer asks to hear from others who are scared of being stung and who, in consequence, stay away from enjoyable occasions to avoid the possibility.
That sentence contains the only account of the cost anywhere in the sources. The season is the summer, the occasions are the ones held outdoors, and what is lost is not a task but company.
It is also the more honest of the two records. An encyclopedia article calls the fear relatively common without evidence; a person on a dating site says what it does to a summer.
What is not established about spheksophobia
No prevalence figure exists for this fear specifically, no case report has been published under the name, and no manual carries the term. What is known about the object is that wasps sting more readily than bees and that they do so more than once, which is a real difference in the danger and one no source here relates to the fear.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Wasps
- Fear of BeesThe encyclopedia names them as similar and files both under entomophobia. The object differs in a way that matters: a bee is visible and occupied, and a wasp in a split fruit is neither.
- Fear of InsectsEntomophobia is the parent category, and the sources treat the wasp fear as a subtype of it rather than as a condition with a literature of its own.
- Fear of InjuryWhat is feared is a sting rather than an animal, which makes this a fear of a specific injury with a creature attached, as amychophobia is for scratches.
Common questions
Questions about Spheksophobia
- How much is written about it?
- Three sentences in Wikipedia, two of them about classification: that it resembles the fear of bees and that both sit inside entomophobia, which sits inside zoophobia. The article calls the fear relatively common and offers no figure, no cause, no case and no treatment.
- How is it acquired?
- The one account in the sources is a gardening book of 2006, which describes a few episodes of picking ripe peaches and plums and being viciously stung by wasps hiding inside the splitting fruit as more than enough to bring on a bout of it. The sting arrives with no warning and no provocation the person can identify, which is what distinguishes the object from a bee and what makes the resulting avoidance so broad.
- What does it cost?
- Summer company. The only description of the consequence is a dating site post from December 2006, in which the writer asks to hear from other people who are frightened of being stung and stay away from enjoyable occasions rather than risk it.
- Is it different from a fear of bees?
- The sources call them similar and do not separate them. The catalogue notes one real difference they miss: a bee is visible and occupied with something else, so it can be avoided, and a wasp inside a piece of fruit cannot be seen until the hand is already on it.
Added 2026-08-24 · Revised 2026-08-26
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- Fear of BeesApiphobia is a fear of the sting rather than the insect, and the one phobia whose diagnosis can be settled by an allergy test. What the record holds on it.
- Fear of InsectsAlmost nobody fears insects; they fear cockroaches, or wasps, or moths. The one figure in circulation, six per cent, is credited to a book Wikipedia never names.
- Fear of InjuryMerriam-Webster ties the word to combat. Wikipedia files it with blood and injections. One definition describes a veteran and the other a patient avoiding a procedure.
- Fear of StingsCnidophobia is used for bee stings, but its root is the phylum name for jellyfish and sea anemones. No word exists for the fear of jellyfish.
- Fear of AnimalsWhat predicts fear of an animal is perceiving it as dangerous, disgusting and uncontrollable. Whether anything ever happened to the person does not.
- Fear of AntsBoth forms of this fear take the colony as their object, not the insect. The only study attached to the word tested clips from the Ant-Man films.