The A, Bee, C’s: Of Apitherapy

Apitherapy
Apitherapy is using the products of a honey bee colony for therapeutic purposes. Humans have been doing this for thousands of years, and some apitherapy, like the use of honey to heal wounds and burns and soothe sore throats, has been scientifically proven effective. Also, the use of bee venom in immunotherapy to protect people allergic to bee stings from having an anaphylactic reaction when stung is a medically sound therapy and invaluable to bee sting allergic beekeepers. Beeswax is also used in many protective skin products like lip balm and lotion.
 
Benefits?
Other components of a honey bee hive that have been used to prevent or treat ailments do not have many peer-reviewed clinical studies to support their claims. Though many people anecdotally report a wide variety of health benefits from the ingestion or topical use of pollen, propolis, bee bread, and royal jelly. Caution should be exercised in use of these products, particularly in those people with pollen or bee venom/sting allergies.
 
Controversial
The most controversial form of apitherapy is bee sting therapy or bee venom therapy used not in the context of bee allergy immunotherapy. Bee sting therapy has been reported to treat a variety of diseases including arthritis, Lyme disease, multiple sclerosis, lupus, Parkinson’s Disease, and possibly some forms of cancer, but reliable scientific backing of these claims is sparse. In fact, bee sting therapy has been shown to actually cause autoimmune disease symptoms in some individuals. Because not all of the components of bee venom are well studied or even known, and because each bee’s venom sac contains a slightly different amount and mixture of these components, there are serious risks to bee sting therapy. These risks include, but are not limited to, organ failure and death. Bee sting apitherapy should not be attempted lightly, by anyone who is not a trained professional, without access to an Epipen, or without immediate access to proper medical intervention should a severe reaction occur.
 
More Information: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43513817

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