Hi Jack, I know we have discussed this elsewhere at quite some length, but I have found that if I take them early, some of the non-drowsy antihistamines help a lot. Loratadine (Claritin) works pretty well for me, if I take it very soon after the sting, then daily for about 4 days. If I have a lot of stings, nothing beats the drowsy stuff. It just gets hard to do anything else. 
Claritin didnāt work so well this weekend because we were requeening, and that made me take it late. We had removed the old queen 24 hours previously, and we needed to search the hive (2 brood boxes) for signs of emergency queen cells. I got stung near the beginning of the inspection. As you can imagine, the bees didnāt like the disruption of being shaken off every frame. They were already cranky from being queenless.
It was about 2 hours before I could get back to the house and take the antihistamine. Plus I didnāt even think it was that bad at the time. It got much worse over night and the next day it was obvious that I should have acted sooner. 