I spent the day, yesterday, helping my Dad take out some dead trees around his house. Two 70' pines, and a 4' diameter live oak. Ran chain saws, backhoes, moved monster pieces of tree. The only injury was a sting I got just after getting a shackle out of a tractor mounted tool box. I didn't think anything about it at the time, I've been stung by just about every bee known to man with no effect. I never saw this one, so I don't know what it was. Last night it started itching. This morning it had puss in it. By this afternoon it was red and swollen. Talking to a couple of friends, general consensus is brown recluse. Crap. 
Time to go to the Doctor. 
The doctor didn't know what it was, but gave me some antibiotics to take. I guess we'll see.
I had bee stings for years until one time... mine looked like that and I swelled up bad. Antibiotics and I was all good (haven't been stung since).
I'm no expert, but I thought Brown Recluse bites didn't show up for a few hours. Black widow bites on the other hand show up almost instantly.
This happened yesterday about noon. At the time, just a little burn and a dot on my arm. 24 hours later, it looks like like crap.
If it was a Fiddleback CRAP would be more appropriate. Watch it closely and go back to the doc if it gets any worse. Recluse bites are very bad juju.
I'll second that. Be careful where you stick your arm.
Doing some work on the car the other day, I grabbed a battery from the barn, lifted it, and turned at the same time. Right into a rusty nail head sticking 3 inches out of a support post.
It went in about 1 1/2" at about 5 o'clock on that pic 
Note to self. Slow down next time.
At least it was bleeding, had a tetanus booster lately?
4eyes
HalfDork
9/11/11 10:00 p.m.
The brown recluse bite that I had looked like a miniature snake-bite. Two distinct holes. (:)
If it was a BR, you have an interesting few days ahead of you.
"Fiddle-dee-dee! That will require a tetanus shot..."
wbjones
SuperDork
9/12/11 4:27 p.m.
I could hotlink these but they're sorta disgusting so I'll just post a link
brown recluse bites....
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=brown%20recluse%20spider%20bite%20stages&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
Well, here's the update. After 48 hours, 24 on the meds, swelling is down, redness is down, and the nasty little dot in the middle is looking more like a freckle than a sewer drain. Still itches some, but I can live with that as long as my arm doesn't rot off. So all seems to be good here.
In reply to wbjones:
Yeah, I was looking at some of those last night. Some of them are enough to make you loose your dinner.
With age you may be losing your tolerance for bee stings and such , not that anyone here is aging.
That thought has crossed my mind. Not that I'm aging or anything.
None of us are, we are the immortals.
Unless you're elderly or an infant, you'll be fine. My girlfriend was bitten by a brown recluse on day one of a three day canoe trip in the middle of nowhere, and while it itched and turned some very interesting colors, she was fine. And she's a bit of a wuss.
TRoglodyte wrote:
With age you may be losing your tolerance for bee stings and such , not that anyone here is aging.
This is true. I had never been bothered by bee stings very much until 2005. I had a sting on my leg with very similar results to the photos on the original post. A week later I got stung again and had a very nasty reaction, itching all over my body, big bumps appearing, tunnel vision. dizziness and slurred speech. My girlfriend started to take me to the hospital. As I was loosing consciousness she called an ambulance that we met enroute to the hospital. A shot of adrenaline and some benadryl and I felt fine. Since then I have been stung about a dozen times. I have only had to use the Epi Pen one of those times.
I got hit by a yellow jacket two weeks ago, blew up big time! ITCH !!!
My wife got hit, also in the back of the hand last weekend, her hand looks like a fat mitten.
Never bothered either one of us before, Zombie Bees?
