Treating Hay Fever With Bee Products - Apitherapy with Dr. Stefan Stangaciu, Pt. 3

0:00 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

1:31 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

3:02 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,

4:33 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.

6:02 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.

7:21 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.

8:44 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, but right now is a great time to order your live bees for 2026 because they do sell out and because Man Lake is offering a discount for Be Love Podcast listeners. Wait, what? I know, you're saying live bees, they never go on sale. Well, they are now. Click on over to Man Lake, order your bees any variety, nukes or packages, and anything in the beginner essentials category. And when you check out, use the code GETSTARTEDINBEEZ, it's down in the show notes so you don't have to remember, for a discount on everything. So get your orders in early and save. at the beginning they thought that they are coming mainly from honey but now the surprise was that they are

10:16 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.

11:16 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.

12:29 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.

13:44 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.

14:50 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.

15:44 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

17:16 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

18:49 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

20:21 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.

21:22 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 up for our free newsletter. And a shout out to V2B Health for their support also. Vita's Varroa Control Ranger products includes Epistan, Epigard, and now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys. Happy New Year. See you for the kickoff of Season 3 next week. you