A Cornell University graduate student who allowed honeybees to sting him in 25 places and a group of scientists who concluded it’s possible for one man to father 888 children are among the winners of this year’s Ig Nobels, which honor the humorous and ridiculous side of scientific research.

Michael Smith estimates he was stung about 200 times during his 2012 honeybee study. His conclusion: The three most painful places to get stung are the nostril, the upper lip and the male genitalia.

“A sting to the nostril is so painful it’s like a whole body experience,” he said.

Other winners being honored at the 25th annual ceremony at Harvard University include a trio of linguists who discovered that almost every language in the world uses the word “huh” for clarification in a conversation and researchers who found that corporate CEOs take less professional risk if directly affected by natural disasters as children. Huh.

Real Nobel laureates hand out the prizes, and each winner receives a cash award: a Zimbabwean 10 trillion-dollar bill, the equivalent of a couple of U.S. dollars.

Smith shared the Ig Nobel for physiology and entomology with Justin Schmidt, an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona who devised a pain scale for insect stings.

His advice: Do not get stung by the tarantula hawk, a nasty looking wasp found in the Southwestern U.S. with a stinger about a quarter-inch long.

“The sting is entirely nontoxic but hurts like the bejesus,” Schmidt said.

Mark Dingemanse and two colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Netherlands, won the Ig Nobel for literature for determining that the word “huh” is used in languages around the world, including some of the most obscure.

“A system for fixing misunderstandings is clearly a crucial part of language,” he said. “’Huh?’ is one element of this system: It’s the basic error signal people fall back on if all else fails.” Uh-Huh.

As usual, the winners were thrilled with the honor.

“Sometimes these crazy things provide a lot of insight,” said Schmidt, the sting pain researcher.