Learning and mately writing about about Bee Medicine is a journey. In starting out on this journey is was not my intent to arrive where I AM now. Sometimes a journey can begin and end (or least be altered) in ways I would not have thought. We all have been in a situation where we started on a journey with a particular destination in mind only to have detours and other challenges that have come up to totally and forever alter our initial destination. Such has been my experience with bees and Beekeeping.

Without going into too many details my journey begin in 1979 and 1980. During this time I was looking for a hobby that I could enjoy, relish and learn. I chose Beekeeping since I had always had a fascinating with insects and more particularly with honeybees. I started at the San Francisco Public Library and went and read every book on bees and beekeeping. This was in the fall and winter of 1979. By the spring of 1980, I now felt ready to take the plunge into beekeeping—-from theory to practice. Where would I go? Who could help me? And more importantly how would I start. One must remember that 1979, was a pre internet and social media era. Just thinking about this makes me feel so old—-a pre internet era? Certainly in today’s world this is hard to believe. Don’t we now feel that the internet has been in existence since the dawn of human kind?

Since there was no internet and social media in existence I went to the most reliable resource available back then—the yellow pages of the phone book! I looked up the subject, beekeeping. Here I found a couple of beekeepers that I could contact. Surely they could help me. I called the first beekeeper whose yellow pages advertisement stated he sold bees and Beekeeping supplies. I spoke to Mr. Franklin Carrier and stated what I wanted and planned to do. He invited me to come down to San Jose, about 30 miles south of me and we could talk about how he could help me get started. This was to become a budding business friendship.

Mr. Carrier sold me my first nucleus colony of 4 frames of brood (eggs) with a laying queen. I was overjoyed to get started. My brother pitched in to help and learn. At the end of the first season, in the late fall of that year (1980) I was able to harvest 4 frames of comb honey. I had a get together of friends and family and gave each one a block of comb honey wrapped in aluminum foil. That day I felt a erie strange feeling of how I had accomplish something truly special. My friend said to me that day that he was proud that I could take a concept to fruition and the comb honey was ample proof that I had done something truly special.

By 1984 I had grown one colony to 8 colonies. I was producing enough honey to sell to family and friends and to sell on weekends at the local farmers and flea markets. Needless to say my learning curve in the world of beekeeping had grown exponentially. I now belonged to the local beekeeping club and had a few beekeepers I could share my experiences. As I moved around I always seemed to find the bees and beekeepers and they seem to find me. At this point, by having read that bees and humans share a special kinship I was now living this experience. When I moved to Sacramento, California I was exposed to larger commercial beekeeping agriculture operations. It was here that I learned the importance of bee pollination to commercial agriculture. Here, I met several large commercial pollinators with 100’s if not 1000’s of bee colonies. Again, being “all in” I became the Secretary and the Newsletter Editor of the Sacramento Beekeeping Club. This was a rewarding experience and I was able to learn new aspects of beekeeping.

I had been involved in Natural and Alternative health for some time. The more I read and researched the more I came to find that honey and all of the products from the honeybees have very profound healing and medicinal properties. Not totally convinced with what I read, I begin putting these products to the test. Honey, Bee Pollen, Royal Jelly and Propolis were renowned for the healing properties that they carried. It was now only for me to verify these magical properties which I did with amazing results.

In 1994 my Bee and Beekeeping experiences were to take an astounding turn. I applied and was accepted into the Winrock Internationnal Farmer-to-Farmer Program. I was selected to go to Russia on a Beekeeping project. I was to assist various beekeepers with setting up business models to sell their honey and other related bee products. My experiences were overwhelmingly wonderful as I traveled to many cities and villages meeting with various farmers, beekeepers, business leaders and merchants. The biggest thing that I learned there was the villagers and citizens used the bee products for medicine and had been doing this for centuries. This was further confirmed when I and a colleague traveled to Razon Russian Bee Institute in Razon, Russia. We were impressed to find that Russia has a beekeeping history and tradition that was at least 1000 years old. We marveled that America is a mere 400 years old. Therefore the Russian Beekeeping tradition is more than twice the age of the age of our country.

During my time there much did I learned. The biggest thing I learned was that the Bee products are used as both food and medicine or should I say food as medicine. It opened new horizons of research about the applications of bee products as medicine. I became intrigued. The more I research and learned the more I wanted to learn.

The following time was spent lecturing, attending workshops and building on the learning experiences I was able to garner from my experiences in Russia. I subsequently went to Russia on a follow-up trip that included trips to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Continuing on my Bee journey, in 2011 I published a book called “An Introduction to Bee Medicine”. In this book my purpose was to expose the reader to the knowledge and application of the bee products as medicine as well as super foods. I knew that this was common knowledge in Russia and other Eastern European and Asian countries; but in America this was another story. My task was to expose the reader to the infinite possibilities of Bee Products as medicine.

Well, what is Bee Medicine? Bee Medicine is the use of the products derived from the beehive. Those products include; Honey, Royal Jelly, Bee Pollen, Propolis and Bee Venom (Therapy). These products have both nutritional attributes and medicinal applications. There are literally realms of information, including books, scientific articles and publications about the wonderful medicines that can be gotten from the honeybee.

My journey has not stopped there. As a follow up, I AM writing a more in-depth book on Bee Medicine and its applications. This book will be more complete about the applications in Natural Health and Wellness. This book will be publish in the near future.

I have since been living in Vilcabamba Ecuador and Mexico researching all the possibilities of honeybees relationship to the medicinal plants, particularly those that derive from the Amazon Rainforest and the plant foliage particular to this environment.

The Bee Journey continues...stay tuned...