Most of my readers know that I am beekeeper and an apitherapist. I am the Vice president of the American Apitherapy Society. My colleague and friend, Dr Gary Ostrow sent me this article about bee venom and corona virus
This is written by a physician who participated in the prevention and control of coronavirus in China.
There is one discovery we would like to report here. It reminds us the story of the discovery of cowpox and the eventual victory of humans over this disease (Bennett and Baxby, 1996).
Apitherapy means making use of bee venom from the honeybee's sting to treat or prevent certain diseases. There is evidence apitherapy may prevent COVID-19.
In Hubei province, the epicentre of COVID-19 in China, the local beekeepers association conducted a survey of beekeepers (Fig. 1 ). A total of 5115 beekeepers were surveyed from February 23 to March 8, including 723 in Wuhan, the outbreak epicentre of Hubei. None of these beekeepers developed symptoms associated with COVID-19, and their health was totally normal.
After that, we interviewed five apitherapists in Wuhan and followed 121 patients of their apitherapy clinic. These patients had received apitherapy from October 2019 to December 2019, and all the five bee apitherapists have the habit of self-apitherapy for their own health care.
Without any protective measures, two of the five apitherapists were exposed to suspected COVID-19 cases and others were exposed to confirmed COVID-19 cases, but none of them were infected eventually.
None of the 121 patients were infected by SARS-CoV-2, and three of them had close contact with immediate family members who were confirmed SARS-CoV-2 Infection cases.
It might be supposed that beekeepers are less likely to be exposed to SARS-CoV-2 because they live in less densely populated rural areas. But the five apitherapists and their patients are from densely populated areas in Wuhan. These people have one thing in common: they develop a tolerance to bee sting.