About Apitherapy

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Did You Know ?

A Queen bee can lay up to 2,500 eggs per day !

All worker bees are female and have a normal lifespan of 45 days !

Male bees are called "Drones" and their only role is to mate with the Queen of another hive !

A typical honeybee colony has 50,000 to 80,000 bees !

1Queen (reproductive female)

300Drones (reproductive males)

25,000older Worker Bees, foragers (non-reproductive females)

25,000young Worker Bees, in hive (non-

reproductive females) 20,000capped Larvae

9,000Larvae requiring food

6,000Eggs

A fully fertile Queen Bee lives 4 - 7 years compared to approximately 45 days for a worker bee !

The Queen Bee's diet consists exclusively of royal jellywhich is produced by young worker bees.

About Apitherapy

What is Apitherapy ?

Apitherapy is the use of honeybee producedsubstances for health and healing.

Honeybees produce honey, pollen, propolis, royaljelly, and beeswax, all of which are used by peoplefor nutrition, immune system support, treatment of avariety of ailments, skin care, and healing of openwounds. Even bee venom is used to treat manychronic conditions.


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Honeybee Produced Substances Used for Apitherapy

Bee Pollen

Bee Pollen is the male reproductive material of plants used bybees to feed their larvae. Pollen is the honeybee's exclusivesource of protein, containing all the essential amino acids thatpeople require. People use bee pollen as a multi-vitamin, energybooster, and/or to build up their resistance to air-borne (hayfever type) allergens.

Propolis

Propolis is a combination of beeswax, honey, and tree resins mixed with bee-produced enzymes, used toprotect the bee hive from bacteria, fungus, and viruses. Propolis has natural anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-oxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties. People use propolis as a remedy for colds &influenza, and to boost the immune system. The antibacterial and anti-fungal properties of propolis makeit an ideal topical ingredient for treating various skin conditions.

Royal Jelly

Royal Jelly is an enzyme enriched food, produced by young worker bees and fed to a queen bee for herentire life. People use royal jelly as a multi-vitamin, an immune system booster to promote longevity, andfor mental clarity.

Honey

Honey is plant nectar, converted to simple sugars, dehydrated, and used for energy and winter food.People use honey as a natural sweetener, as a sore throat remedy, cough suppressant, and for healing

wounds. SeeAbout Honeyto learn more.

Bee Venom

Bee Venom is produced by worker female bees to defend themselves and their colony. People use beevenom to treat over 40 illnesses, including warts, arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Learn more aboutBeeVenom Therapy.

Beeswax

Beeswax is produced by worker female bees for building the honeycomb structure that is used for broodrearing and storing of honey & pollen. People use beeswax for a number of items including candles,

cosmetics, and furniture polishes. SeeAbout Beeswax and Candlesto learn more.

Health and Nutrition

Bee Nutraceutical products are pure and natural honeybee products used as dietary supplements topromote good health. The products produced by the honeybee are Royal Jelly, Pollen, Propolis, andHoney. These products may be taken separately in their native form or mixed into blends to provide theright balance in an easy to take mixture.
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Natural Body Care

Honey, beeswax, and propolis are used as healing and pampering agents in a number of body careproducts including soap, lip balm, cremes, salves and lotions.

Honey in Wound Care

Honey has been used in treating open wounds for centuries. Until the development of antibiotics in themid 1900s, honey was the primary treatment for wounds on the battlefield. For the next 50 years, the useof honey in wound care, especially in western countries, lost favour. However, in the past 20 years therehas been renewed interest in using honey, driven in large part by the concern of the rapid development ofantibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.

There has been a large number of peer reviewed scientific studies that have shown the efficacy of usinghoney, particularly manuka honey, in the treatment of severe chronic wounds such as diabetic foot ulcers.Honey can be used to treat open wounds, burns, and skin ulcers. Results from studies have shown thathoney used on open wounds has the following results:

Inflamation, swelling and pain are quickly reduced

Unpleasant odours cease

Wound dressings can be changed painlessly with no damage to re-growing tissue

Minimal scarring occurs

Honey has been shown to prevent the growth of wound bacteria and to protect the wound from gettinginfected. Honey also provides a moist, nutrient rich environment that actually assists the natural healingprocess of the body.

Anti-Microbial Properties of Honey

Unlike antibiotics that have a single mode of action against bacteria, honey has multiple modes of actionthat attack bacteria in different ways:

Anti-Microbial Properties of Honey

MODE DESCRIPTION

Osmotic

Effect

Honey is over 80% sugar and leaves few water molecules availablefor micro-organisms.

Acidity

The pH level for honey is between 3.2 and 4.5, which is inhospitablefor most wound bacteria that can tolerate a minimum pH level of

approximately 4.0 to 4.5.

Hydrogen

Peroxide

Honey contains glucose oxidase, an enzyme which facilitates areaction that produces a slow release of hydrogen peroxide. The lowlevels of hydrogen peroxide produced are sufficient to kill bacteria

without damaging tissue.


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Phytochemical

Factors

Some honey contains other plant chemicals with anti-microbialproperties. These are not available in all types of honey. The best

known, and most widely researched honey with phytochemical anti-microbial properties, is manuka honey.

Honey has been shown to be effective against species of bacteria most commonly involved in wound

infection. This includes several studies showing honey being effective against "super bugs" such asMethicillin-resistant-Staphylococcus aureus (MSRA) and Vancomycin-resistant-Enterococci (VRE).

Not All Honeys are Equal !

All honey have anti-microbial properties. However, the anti-microbial activity can range up to 100 times,ie one honey may be up to 100 times more effective than another honey. Different honeys also havediffering anti-microbial activities against various strains of wound bacteria.

Manuka Honey

Manuka honey is produced from nectar from the manuka bush (Leptospermum scoparium), a member ofthe tea tree family, native to New Zealand. Manuka honey is known for its highly active antibacterialproperties, far beyond those of normal honeys.

The special antibacterial properties of manuka honey, also referred to as the Unique Manuka Factor(UMF), are due to phytochemicals in the manuka nectar. The UMF activity of manuka honey is highlystable compared to the hydrogen peroxide antibacterial mode, which deteriorates with high temperaturesand over the span of 6-12 months.

Dr. Peter Molan, and his team from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, are responsible for much

of the modern day research on honey used for wound care. Manuka honey is clearly the honey of choicein modern honey wound care dressings. It is recommended that only medical grade honey is used in thecare of open wounds, as the honey has been sterilized to ensure that it contains no active pathogens.

Manuka honey is also widely used to assist in the treatment of gastrointestinal problems, such as pepticulcers. The belief is that the UMF antibacterial activity of the manuka honey works against harmfulbacteria in the digestive tract. Anecdotal evidence appears to support this theory but peer reviewedscientific evidence is still lacking.

Bee Venom Therapy

Bee Venom Therapy (BVT) is the use of bee venom to treat human and animal disorders using a live bee

or bee venom injection. BVT is used to treat people, horses, dogs, and cats. Over 40 different illnesses aretreated with BVT including arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

BVT practitioners need to be careful because bee venom is histamine (poison) and it may cause a personto have an allergic reaction, which may vary from slight reddening of the skin to a life threateningsituation with difficulty breathing.


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Before a person starts with a BVT treatment schedule, he/she should conduct thorough research, consult aphysician, and have an EpiPen nearby.

BVT is not for everyone. It is sometimes difficult to obtain bees and a treatment is painful.

The old fashioned method of applying a bee sting caused the bee to die. New methods consist of stingingthrough a stainless steel micro mesh, which allows the venom to enter the skin but prevents the stingerbarb from attaching. Thus, the bee is not harmed and her venom regenerates within one or two days.

About Beekeeping

What is Beekeeping ?

Beekeeping (apiculture) is the practice of managinghoneybee colonies to attain desired objectives. Themost common primary objectives for managingcolonies are to:

1. Ensure large, healthy adult honeybeepopulations to coincide with major nectar flows;

2. To use these strong honeybee colonies tobest execute the beekeeping management plan to:

Maximize the collection of nectar (ie. tomaximize honey production); and/or

Provide pollination services for local foodcrops.

Some beekeepers have other objectives for their honeybee colonies such as:

Raising honeybee livestock for sale to other beekeepers;

Producing other honeybee substances, including bee pollen, propolis, and royal jelly.

Planning is Key

In order to attain the desired results, be it honey production, pollination services, or other goals, thebeekeeper needs a plan. The fundamental elements that drive the plan are:

1. Knowledge of local nectar flows.This knowledge is critical in that it tells the beekeeper which

crops provide nectar and pollen for the honeybees, when the nectar flows occur, where the cropsare located, and how prolific they are. This also provides timing for moving honeybee coloniesinto and out of fields for pollinating various food crops for growers. This knowledge not onlygives the timing for maximizing the strength of colonies to take advantage of nectar flows, butalso identifies times when there will be a shortage of food for the bees.

2. Knowledge of honeybee biology. The beekeeper must understand the natural instincts of thehoneybee in order to facilitate an environment to enhance the productivity of the colony.Honeybees are social insects and thus the beekeeper must manage honeybee colonies as opposed


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to managing at the individual bee level. To do this, the beekeeper must have a good knowledge ofthe honeybee life cycle, seasonal cycles of the honeybee colony, the roles of of the different typesof bees, and honeybee diseases. Since most of the beekeeper's objectives revolve aroundhoneybees collecting nectar, knowledge of the food requirements of the colony, and how the bees

collect and process food, is critical.

3. Beekeeping techniques to manipulate the colony.

There are a number of basic beekeeping techniques that areused to ensure good colony health, and to maximize colonystrength at the desired times. Management techniques dovary somewhat, and are fined tuned to the conditions inparticular regions.

4. Deciding on the goals and how to best use thecolonies. Given the local nectar flows, pollinationopportunities, and the price of honey, the beekeeper mustmake a plan as to how to best manage the colonies to achieve

the desired objectives.

Beekeeping Tools and Equipment

Basic Hive Equipment

Modern honeybee colonies are designed to mimic thedimensions and environment of a bees nest built naturally bywild (feral) honeybees, with the added ability to removeindividual frames of honeycomb for inspection andmanipulation. The dimensions of the removable frames aresimilar in dimension to honeycomb built in the wild. Onenotable feature is that the space between each frame, knownas the "bee space", is approx 8 mm. This space is sufficientfor the bees to move around but not big enough so that the

bees will build additional honeycomb in the space, thusfacilitating easy removal of the frames.

A standard bee hive consists of:

One bottom board

One or two brood chambers (each containing 9 or 10 removable frames)

One queen excluder (to prevent the queen from moving from the brood chamber to the honeysupers)

One or more honey supers (boxes each containing 9 or 10 removable frames)

One inner cover

One telescoping hive cover

Beekeeper's Tools

The essential tools required by a beekeeper to manipulate honeybee colonies are:

Smoker

Hive tool

Bee veil


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Some beekeepers additionally may use a full bee suit with gloves, and a bee brush.

Basic Colony Examination

Beekeepers check their colonies approximately once every 10 days from spring until fall to ensure thecolonies have good nutrition, strong health, and enough space. The best time to check the hive is on awarm sunny day with little wind to prevent chilling the brood and to take advantage of having most of thefield bees away from the hive. The primary things that a beekeeper is looking for when doing a hiveinspection are:

1. Are there fresh eggs present?This signifies that a queen is present, even if she is not seenduring the inspection.

2. Is the brood pattern good?A spotty appearance to the brood pattern may indicate a poorlyperforming queen or disease issues.

3. Does the colony have enough honey and pollen?If there is not enough food stores, and there islittle external food present, the colony may need supplemental feeding.

4. Are there any signs of disease? If so, appropriate disease treatment protocols may need to beinitiated.

5. Is there enough space?If the colony is strong and there is an abundant food source, a lack ofspace will cause the colony to swarm.

The Beekeeper's Calendar

In February and March beekeepers are checking to ensure that the bees have enough food and are strongand healthy. If a colony becomes weak, it is combined with a strong one. If a colony becomes too strong,it may be divided in half by the beekeeper, thus creating two colonies. Poor queen bees may be replacedwith new ones, and beekeeping equipment is removed from colonies that did not survive the winter. In the

world today, this unfortunately occurs 35% of the time.

During April and May, beekeepers are checking to ensure that the bees have enough room to expand thecolony. If the bees outgrow their physical space, they will swarm. During swarming, a little over half ofthe population of bees leaves the hive to start another colony. If this happens, the beekeeper will lose the

years honey crop from the colony that swarms.

In June and July, the majority of honey and pollen for the year is gathered. During this critical time, thebeekeeper might need to visit the hives every day. Full boxes of honey are removed for extracting, andempty boxes returned to the hives for refilling. Pollen traps are emptied into freezers for storage, and noone gets a day off.

By August and September, the last of the honey crop is gathered and the bees are prepped for winter.Beekeepers ensure that brood is redistributed to make all colonies of equal strength. Colonies are fed ifneeded, and weak colonies are combined to make strong ones. In colder climates, all of the colonies arewrapped in an insulated blanket by October.

To Become a Beekeeper

There is a vast knowledge base on beekeeping, including many excellent books and periodicals. Althoughthe basic biology of the honeybee is constant, there are many variables such as weather, genetics, disease


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profiles, local crops and climate that combine to makebeekeeping a complex problem. There are a number ofdifferent methods or variants to managing honeybeecolonies. Beekeepers also tend to be a independent lot andexperiment with their own methods.

Did you know ? If you ask 3 beekeepers a question, youwill get at least 4 different answers !

The recommended way to become a beekeeper is to read anumber of books on the subject, and then to take a course

from a beekeeping instructor that is familiar with your local area. Learn about ourbeekeeping courses.

About Honeybees

What is a honeybee?

Honeybees are flying insects, and close relatives of wasps and ants. They are found on every continent onearth, except for Antarctica.

Bees of all varieties live on nectar and pollen.Without bees, pollination would be difficult andtime consuming - it is estimated that one-third of thehuman food supply depends on insect pollination.Bees have a long, straw-like tongue called aprobiscus that allows them to drink the nectar fromdeep within blossoms. Bees are also equipped withtwo wings, two antennae, and three segmented bodyparts (the head, the thorax, and the abdomen).Honeybees are social insects that live in colonies.The hive population consists of a single queen, a few

hundred drones, and thousands of worker bees.

The honeybees we know and love here at Honeybee Centre forage for nectar and pollen from floweringplants. They use the nectar collected to create our favourite sweet treat - honey! When carrying the nectarback to the hive, their bodies break down the complex sucrose of the nectar into two simple sugars,fructose and glucose. Tucking it neatly into a honeycomb cell, the bees will then beat their wingsfuriously over top of this syrupy sweet liquid to fan out the moisture and thicken the substance. When it iscomplete, the bees will cap that cell with beeswax, sealing the perfected honey for consumption later on.

For more information about honey, check out ourAbout Honeypage.

Worker Bees

Worker bees are the most familiar-looking member of the honeybee hive, as they make up about 99% ofeach colony's population.

Worker bees are all female, and they do almost everything for the hive. From birth to her death 45 dayslater, the worker bee is given different tasks to do during different stages of her life. Worker bees areresponsible for everything from feeding the larvae (the baby bees), to tending to the queen, to cleaning the
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hive, to collecting food, to guarding the colony, to building honeycomb.

The stinger of the worker bee is barbed, so when she is forced to defend herself or the hive, her stingerwill become stuck in the skin of her victim. She is unable to pull it out, and dies when she inevitably tearsherself away from the stuck stinger, leaving it behind with the venom sack still pumping venom into hervictim. Consequently, honeybees are very gentle - they don't want to die any more than you want to be

stung. Be nice to them, and they'll be nice to you.

Drone Bees

Male bees are called drones. Their job is to mate with queensfrom other hives. If they do get the opportunity to mate, theydie immediately afterwards. If they do not mate, they can liveup to 90 days (that's twice as long as a worker bee!)

You can identify drones in the hive by their big round bodiesand large eyes. Drones are incapable of stinging.

Queen Bees

There is one queen bee per hive - she is the mom of all theother bees. She is the only fertile member of the colony, andlays about 1,500 eggs a day during spring and summer.

Queen bees are distinguished from the other members of thehive by their long abdomens and small wings. Soon afterbirth, queen bees will go out and have a wild weeked, wherethey mate with 15 or more drones over a three day period

before retiring to the hive to lay eggs. The queen will not leave the hive again unless the colony swarms(looking for a new home).

When the colony needs a new queen bee, they simply choose a healthy larva, hatched from an egg of thecurrent queen, and feed it royal jelly, a special, super-nutrious food. Royal jelly, produced in the heads ofyoung nurse bees (worker bees whose job it is to care for the larvae), helps this larva grow into a queen.Queens can lay about 1,500 eggs per day and can live from 4 to 7 years, that's up to 57 times longer than aworker bee - it's no wonder humans love adding royal jelly to their diets, too!

Life in the Hive

Contrary to popular belief, honeybees do not build an external structure that contains their hive. They loveto live in hollow spaces, whether that means a hollow tree, an empty fallen log, or in a traditional man-made bee hive.

They do, however, build the inside of their hive. Honeybees make their own special wax (beeswax),which they use to create perfect little hexagons inside their home. These little cubbyholes are called cells,and in them, the bees store everything from eggs, to pollen, to honey. For more information aboutbeeswax, check out theAbout Beeswaxpage.
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To seal their hive and to protectagainst diseases, the bees make asubstance called propolis. Propolisis a combination of beeswax, honey,and tree resins, and is anti-bacterial,anti-fungal, and anti-viral. It

disinfects and protects their hive. Itis also very sticky, and honeybeeslove to use it to seal up any cracksor holes they may encounter on ahousekeeping mission. For moreinformation about propolis, checkout theAbout Apitherapypage.

With such a large population allworking together, some greatcommunication skills are needed.

Bees do their talking in two ways - by scent and by dancing. When a honeybee is warning her sisters

about an intruder, or if all the ladies in the hive are particularly happy, honeybees have the ability torelease a special hormonal scent called pheromones. The bees can detect these scents and interpret theirmessage. A happy bee pheromone smells suspiciously like lemons, and a warning-smell has a banana-likescent.

When a forager bee needs to alert her sisters as to where a nectar source is, dancing comes in handy. Shedoes special turns and wiggles to show where she found the food - essentially drawing a map. Comecheck out our observation hive and watch for dancing bees!

About Pollination

What is Pollination ?

Pollination is the process of transferring themale part of the plant (pollen) to the femalepart of the plant (Pistil), which completesfertilization, thus enabling the plant toproduce fruit or vegetables.

Pollination may be abiotic, wherepollination occurs without the involvementof other organisms, or biotic, where otherorganisms called pollinators transport thepollen grains from the anther to the pistil.About 80% of all plant pollination is biotic.Many plants require cross-pollination,where pollen is delivered from the flower ofone plant to the flower of another plant.Cross-pollination helps at least 30 percent of

the worlds food crops and 90 percent of ourwild plants to thrive.
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Who are the Pollinators ?

Pollinators are animals, usually insects, but may alsobe birds, mammals, or reptiles. The transport ofpollen is usually the result of their activities, such asvisiting plants for feeding. Plants attract their

preferred pollinators through brightly colouredpetals, scent, and nectar & pollen which provide asource of food.

Up until about one hundred years ago, there wereenough wild bees and other insects in the world topollinate virtually all of the food crops being

planted. Today, however, because of intensive agricultural practices, and a sharp decline in the number ofwild bees due to the use of chemicals, pollution, and destruction of insect habitat, there simply are notnearly enough wild insect pollinators to effectively pollinate our crops.

As a result, the business of honeybee pollination serviceshas developed throughout many parts of theworld, where a beekeeper can rent a colony of honeybees to a farmer for the bloom season, which is

typically 4 weeks long. Its estimated that there are about 2.4 million colonies in the U.S. today, two-thirds of which are used for pollinating crops. More than one million colonies are used each year inCalifornia just to pollinate the states almond crop!

Honeybees Pollinate Major Food Crops

Of the worlds 115 most important food crops, 87require pollination to produce fruits, nuts and seeds.They account for a third of the $3 trillion worth ofagricultural produce sold each year. These cropsprovide 35% of the calories we consume yearly andmost of the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.Seven of the nine crops that provide at least half thevitamin C to the human diet depend on insectpollination. They include oranges, cabbages,peppers, tomatoes, melons, tangerines andwatermelons. Five major fruit crops (apple, almond,

avocado, blueberry and cranberry) are reliant on insect pollination.

In North America, approximately 1.5 million beehives are rented out to many different food crops. In theLower Mainland of British Columbia, honeybees are used to pollinate apples, blueberries, currants,strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, kiwi, cranberries, pumpkin, zucchini, and squash.

Did you know ?Honeybees pollinate one third of the food we eat !

Economic Benefit of Honeybee Pollination

A 2000 Cornell University study concluded that the direct value of honeybee pollination to U.S.agriculture was more than $14.6 billion. Current estimates are close to $20 billion. The almond crop inCalifornia alone is worth $2.3 billion annually. The economic value of pollination worldwide may be as


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high as $90 billion. The economic value of honeybee pollination to food crops in Canada has beenestimated at over $2 billion a year.

The economic benefit to the grower is far greater than it is to the beekeeper. In a blueberry crop, forexample, the fruit yield can increase by as much as 50% from honeybee pollination. If a grower withmature plants rents 6 colonies per acre at a total cost of $450, they can expect as much as $5,000 in

additional fruit.

About Beeswax & Candles What is Beeswax ?

Honeybees are the only creatures that make theirown home construction materials. When they needto create a place to raise their young or to store food,worker female bees make honeycomb.

Beeswax is a tough wax formed from a mixture ofseveral compounds including: hydrocarbons,monoesters, diesters, triesters, hydroxy monoesters,hydroxy polyesters, acid esters, acid polyesters, freeacids, free alcohols, and other unidentifiedsubstances (ok . . . let's just say it's wax).

How Bees Make Beeswax

Honeybees ingest honey to make beeswax. It takes approximately 7 kg of honey to produce 1 kg of wax.Once honey is ingested, the bees hang inside the colony for 24 hours while their bodies convert the honeyinto wax. The wax is secreted out of eight glands on the underside of the bee's abdomen. When the waxleaves the bee's body and comes in contact with the air, it causes the wax to solidify into dinner-plateshaped flakes. The bees then grab these wax plates with their legs, bring them up to their mandibles, and

chew them to soften the wax. Then they carefully mold the wax into the perfect honeycomb structure.

History of Beeswax

When beekeepers used to extract honey, they would use cheesecloth the press the honey out of thebeeswax honeycomb. Left with all this extra wax, they would then use their uneventful winter months tocreate candles out of this versatile material.

How Beeswax Cleans the Air

Burning beeswax produces negative ions that circulate in the room and attract pollutants, in much thesame way that a magnet attracts iron fillings. Dust, odours, moulds, bacteria, viruses, and other toxins are

captured and neutralized. Beeswax actually cleans your air. However, you still have to vacuum yourhouse.

Beeswax versus Paraffin

(Reprinted from an article written by Bill Reno, entomologist & writer based in Toronto)


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As described above, burning beeswax produces negative ions that circulate in the room and attractpollutants, thus actually cleaning the air.

You can burn beeswax in an unventilated room without fear of pollution. In fact, many people report thatburning a candle in the bedroom for 30 minutes or so before falling asleep produces a more restful sleep.

Paraffin, on the other hand, is a petroleum waste product, made from the sludge left over from thegasoline and petrochemical refining process. Paraffin produces no negative ions and so adds to thepollutants in your home. People with respiratory problems should not use paraffin candles, nor shouldpeople who do not want to develop such problems.

Burning paraffin produces toxic combustion by-products, many of which are known to be carcinogens.Breathing the fumes from burning paraffin candles is essentially the same as breathing the exhaust fumesfrom a diesel engine.

Caring for & Burning Beeswax Candles

Beeswax candles burn just as long, if not longer, than paraffin candles. They are brighter and cleaner-burning.

Never leave a burning candle unattended. Burn on a flat surface. Consider placing on a candle plate in case of drips.

If the candle starts to get "dusty" looking, that is simply the honey in the beeswax coming to thesurface. Simply polish with a damp cloth to keep your candle looking bright and new.

Uses for Beeswax

Beeswax isn't just used to make candles! Buy yourself a big ol' chunk of the wonderful stuff and use itto...

Make cosmetics Make soap Wax surfboards

Polish furniture

Lubricate zippers

Wax your mustache

Make a work of art

. . . and more!

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About Apitherapy