in a world brimming with complexity few creatures
embody harmony like the honeybee with tireless
precision she dances from bloom to bloom each
motion guided by millennia upon millennia of
instinct each act in service to the whole and
then There are the beekeepers, watchful stewards
of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist,
part poet, they move along their hives with the
efficiency of mow, levy and curly, tending to
the bees' needs as best they can comprehend,
and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the
Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing
like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their
journey. Today, we're going back to Romania for
the final installment in our series about everything
apotherapy with our guest, the world's leading
authority on apotherapy, Dr. Stefan Stangitu,
MD. In parts one and two, we learned all about
propolis, proper honey extraction for medical
uses, selling honey as a health product. honey
for burns, bee venom, and a ton more. And if
you haven't heard them yet, they're episodes
the two right before this, number 250 and 251.
You might want to take a listen. Today we're
taking a deep dive into how to use bee products
for allergies, specifically seasonal allergies
or hay fever. That means desensitization techniques
through honey, pollen, propolis, and even bee
hive air therapy. And if you haven't yet, subscribe
to the show, please hit that button. Now we really
appreciate it. Let's talk about bee pollen and
allergies such as seasonal allergies. Is there
any benefit there? Yes. Okay. So first of all,
those pollen allergies, if you look to the detailed
studies, they are caused mostly by those flying
pollens in the air. They are those very light
pollens. They are called anemophilus pollen,
like they are pollen particles which have inside
a lot of air. So they are very, very light, like
pine pollen, for example. So these are causing
most of the pollen allergies. Our bee pollen...
coming from the flowers where it's a lot of nectar,
that bipolar is heavier. And usually this pollen
doesn't come into the nose like the anemophilus
pollen. But now there are two big methods to
fight this pollen allergies and very, very successful.
One old method is to use honey from the same
area where the patient lives. And because in
the same area, there are this anemophilus pollen
flying. And the bees, when they fly from flower
to flower, know their body is very furry, a lot
of hair. And in the flight, the bees are kind
of contaminated by this special light pollen,
anemophilus pollen, in their body. And when they
come to the next flower, they collect the pollen
from that flower, but they do something like
this, they comb their body. And then they will
get that anemophilus pollen too, which is like
of contaminating the floral pollen but when you
take that small amount of anemophilus pollen
which is mixed more or less in the normal flower
pollen and you eat this pollen or B products
which contains this kind of pollen then you create
what is called the desensitization. It's like
vaccination because you give that allergen not
through the nose Here is mostly allergic reaction,
strong reaction. But when you eat that allergen
in the stomach, the stomach acidity and the enzymes
from the stomach will break down this allergen.
And also in the large intestine, the flora will
open this pollen. And then the immune system
can analyze better this allergenic substances
and can have a better reaction. This is the old
system, like honey from the same area where the
patient lives, yeah? And you start usually like
ideally one to three months before the allergy
season starts or before, you know, there are
people allergic to certain plants, one to months
before you try to get the honey from last year
from the same area. And the second method which
is unbelievable good, and this is the extraordinary
for the beekeepers who are seeing us, is the
beehive air. beehive air therapy. Now in Europe
there are hundreds of beekeepers offering this
beehive air therapy. It's a form of aroma therapy
of aerosols from the beehive and it's an excellent
opportunity and very easy opportunity for a beekeeper
to go into this apitherapy real without needing
complicated approvals or you know complicated
corporations and so on and so on. If they say
that they have a bee house where they can offer
this beehive air, like they offer honey, beeswax,
propolis, and so on. They offer the beehive air.
And in this beehive air, there are very, very
thin amounts of this anemophilus pollen. But
the beauty is that the beekeepers, they use special
devices which are put on top of the beehive.
Inside, of course, when they take out the lid,
there's special access. And they have a filter.
They have a pollen filter. So when the anemophilus
pollen comes through the entrance in the beehive
and then goes to this absorption device, because
of the pollen filter, the filtration of the pollen
is made almost 100%, but not 100%. Some of the
allergenic pollen will go extremely small amount
to the air. So the patient receives into the
nose and the lungs like homeopathic doses of
that allergenic. It's exactly like in vaccination,
exactly like in desensitization for B. venom
allergy, taking an allergen in extremely small
amount. does allow the immune system to calm
down, to understand better what is this allergenic
substance or product and so on, and then the
allergic reaction diminishes. We know this from
the experience. In Germany, in Passau, I organized,
as I said, about 20 international conferences.
And in 2007, thanks to some other beekeeper,
he told us to invite to Passau, to our place
where we gave the congresses, a beekeeper from
Austria. This beekeeper, Harry Huitner, was offering
already for many years this behavior therapy.
And then it was so fascinating how he explained.
We went to his place with two buses. and we saw
at his place how he was doing. And you can imagine
after that all years after this in Germany, every
year, every Congress, some beekeeper would come
and say, yes, I use the same system and I've
got this and these results. So every, every year
like this, like since 2007. And now we have a
lot of experimental, but also clinical data that
beehive arrow is working. And the number one
disease which you can treat is allergic rhinitis,
hay fever. That's from the beehive air or from
the pollen or kind of either or Okay, so there
are several factors here. First of all is that
anemophilus pollen which is in much lower amount
but then You are right, there are other components
from the beehive, beehive air, which acts against
the inflammation. For example, the French guys,
they found out that in the larvae, they communicate
with the adults and so on with special pheromones.
And one of these pheromones is called methylpalmitate.
And the methylpalmitate, when it comes into the
lungs, is anti -inflammatory and antispastic.
Then we have of course in the behavior all kind
of volatile substances. coming mainly from propolis
and from beeswax. And it was done a study in
Dresden in Germany by a professor, Professor
Speer, Technical University in Dresden. They
analyzed the behavior, the components, the substance,
the behavior. They found over 50 such volatiles.
Now the reality is like more than 200 such volatile
components are there depending on the area. But
they were curious to see from where are coming
these volatile substances. It may seem early,
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they thought that they are coming mainly from
honey but now the surprise was that they are
coming mainly from properties and from beeswax
and this is a beautiful information because a
beekeeper which has a bee house for beehive there
we is able to do like aromatherapy, apiaromatherapy,
not only in the summer, like spring, summer,
autumn, but also in the winter, because they
can buy special devices which propolizes the
air in that room with the, you know, these special
devices, the electrical devices which are heating
the properties or the beeswax and releasing the
volatiles in the room. I can talk about those
for just a second. Here in the United States,
there's very little of anything going on with
this beehive air. When I was at Epimondia recently,
there were some companies there, a couple of
different things. One had like a mask that you
wear with a tube. that goes to the hive and you're
breathing this air straight out of the hive.
Another was a couple of companies that have a
diffuser type device like you say to heat up
propolis and then it puts it out into the air
like someone may do with oils and that kind of
thing. There are ways to do that. I think that's
something that's going to be fun for a lot of
us to learn more about. I've seen online a couple
of these bee houses that you can actually go
in and like lay down or just sit in there for
a half an hour and you're feeling the vibration
of the bees and you're breathing the air from
the bees and it sounds like wow and so healthy
and I've not had a chance to try that yet. If
somebody wants to build one here for me I'd love
that. But we'll move on from that. I think I've
monopolized way too much of your time already
Dr. Stefan. I appreciate it so very much. I want
to hit a couple of other things before I let
you go and then we'll get you back some other
time to talk about more. One is Your website
is apitherapy .com and people can go there and
find all kinds of resources. You have some of
your talks on there. You have courses on there.
There are courses that can be done online. There
are courses that can be done in person at your
place in Romania, which I think would be awesome
to go do. And so I recommend that people go look
at some of those kinds of things. Just a couple
more questions before I let you go. One is, and
I think this is important because we're talking
safety here also, your average beekeeper. Which
of these, all these things that we've discussed,
which are safe to do yourself and which do you
need a medical professional for and how do you
find that medical professional if you choose
to do that? Okay, so the first thing to do is
like every beekeeper which has any kind of disease,
first step is to go to his own medical doctor,
yeah, or to the local naturopathic doctor in
North America. Why? Because the symptoms, even
simple symptoms like coughing, for example, may
hide severe disease inside, like possible like
a cancer, yeah. So the first step is to make
this physical exam, to make the laboratory analysis,
and to check with maybe two or three doctors.
And then... If it's nothing serious, it's like
an inflammation, like a disease which is at the
beginning. It's not very complicated. They can
easily use all the B products. Ideally, it's
to use fresh B products. They follow that principle
with the dose, like start with small dose and
increase gradually, like I showed that graphic.
And then they can also contact me, some of them,
when they have some complicated things they cannot
solve, and I can give them by email more specific
advices. But the idea is, one idea also to give
shortly, is if the beekeeper is using in the
treatment more bee products, he or she will have
more effects than only one product. So one good
advice I'm giving to everybody is to put in honey,
some propolis tincture, some pollen, some royal
jelly, some drone larvae, apple Arnil. So when
you combine all these things together and you
take gradually, the chance of healing is much
faster. But anyway, it's very, very important.
They start with these bee products, but they
need to go gradually, regularly, like once a
week, every two weeks to their own medical doctor
locally to check the evolution, just to avoid
complicated situations. You've been a beekeeper
for over 25 years, as well as doing all of this
with your medical profession. everybody that
comes on the show, I give them an opportunity
to talk about some kind of wild, crazy, funny,
embarrassing or whatever beekeeping story. Can
you think of one or two that you'd like to share
with us? Yes, yes, yes. I'll tell you a real
funny and unbelievable story. I was in the 2012
in Budapest in Hungary. I invited to give a lecture
on AP puncture. It was a conference organized
by the Hungarian Apitherapy Society. And it was
a professor from China speaking about AP puncture.
Very, very interesting conference. And then at
the end of the conference, one of the beekeepers
from Hungary, he gave me a big jar of honey,
acacia honey, Hungarian acacia honey. Hungarians
are very famous for acacia honey. So I was so
happy, so I said, oh, thank you very, very much.
So I took this jar of honey, but my luggage,
like check luggage, was already full with books,
with other things. So the only place where I
could put this one kilogram of honey was in my
rucksack. Okay. And then I thought to myself,
I arrived to the airport, like to fly back to
Romania. And on the airport, I was thinking,
okay, okay. But I cannot go with this jar of
honey, one kilo. one liter because the customs
people will say no you are not allowed because
you only 100 milliliter take it away throw it
away and i was so depressed what to do what to
do what to do and as i thinking oh it's not so
good to give my honey to these custom people
they don't know nothing about apitherapy and
so what to do what to do and then i decide okay
i will eat it so i was having a whole kilo Okay,
so I enter into a cafeteria. I bought two bottles
of water. I sit on the table with my laptop doing
emails. But in fact, I was taking a teaspoon
of honey, then a bit of water. A teaspoon of
honey, a bit of water. So I do this like every
minute almost. water honey water honey water
honey and after about one hour i listen to the
this sound system come to gate for bucarest flight
so when i look to the to the my jar i i ate in
this one hour half of it like 500 grams of like
one pound of honey in in one hour so And because
I am medical doctor, I was medical doctor. I
wanted also to check. It was first time in my
life doing this. I said, okay, I will check myself.
I will experiment on myself. Should I have a
diabetic coma, you know, through hyperglycemia
or maybe something like hyperglycemia or heart
problem and so on. And I said, okay, I'm in a
safe environment. I'm in an airport, international
airport. If something happens to me, I go to
the hospital quickly. so the big surprise was
that it was absolutely no adverse reaction no
stomach pain no headache no nothing and it was
perfectly and the same kind of experiment that
i did a couple of years later in switzerland
i received also a jar of honey and it was no
problem what is the explanation the explanation
is that i took the honey with water If you want
to take the honey directly as it is, it is too
aggressive. Although you may have seen in Turkey,
they have a competition where several people
who eat more honey in the smallest period of
time, like one kilo of honey, they can eat like
in a couple of minutes, not like me in one hour.
So the body has huge capacities of accepting
the honey. Of course, the people with diabetes
must be cautious. Of course, they should not
do this experiment. But the idea is that if you
take with water, and I spoke with a professor
from Egypt about this, I said, Stefan, you did
well because you took with water. when you need
huge amounts of energy, you put honey in water
and you add lemon juice. Lemon juice diminishes
the glycemia, the glucose level in the blood.
Then it's everything okay. You can drink one
to three liters of such lemonade very well, especially
in the summertime. So this was one of the funny
stories in my experience. Dr. Stefan, I'm going
to give you the last word. leave us with any
one thought that you'd like to. Oh, thank you
very much for this thought. So looking to all
this, my story, my life story, the bees, the
bee products, the beekeeping, it's amazing. And
it's a pity not to use all we can learn or all
we can get from the bees. So my best advice to
the people who are looking to us is to start
learning about the composition of the B products
to know what kind of substances are in the B
products, like this biochemistry. It may be a
bit dry, but if they understand the composition
of the B products, then they can understand the
effects, the properties, like pharmacological
properties, but just properties. And once they
understand the composition and the properties,
they can go like start flying, like they go,
they can treat or prevent hundreds of diseases.
And it's just a matter of knowledge. So they
need a couple of days or weeks to study these
things. And that's why for many, many years I'm
offering this online course. So the people, they
take this 100 lessons and they have all the time
to understand every concept. Because if you add
to this beekeeping practice, you add the knowledge
on the health properties of the bee products,
it's completely other story. And in fact, we
live for two big reasons, to love the people
and to have a better, better wisdom. And this
can come also through the study of apitherapy.
That's Dr. Stefan Stengetsu. Thank you so very
much. I really appreciate your time today. That
wraps up our series on Apitherapy and our second
season of Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man
Lake. If you haven't yet, please subscribe to
and follow the show. Tell your friends about
it. Click on over to BLoveBkeeping .com and sign
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Strips. Thanks guys. Happy New Year. See you
for the kickoff of Season 3 next week. you