Canadian Beekeepers Use Bee Venom Therapy to Treat Arthritis

Creating a Buzz
By Steve Bartlett, The Telegram (Canada), 8/5/2007

Aubrey Goulding’s knee was being a “real nuisance.” It was to the point where walking down steps was terrible.

He split it open with an ax while working in the woods at age 21 and, as health-care providers predicted at the time, arthritis was setting in years later.

Fed up with the pain, he did something few might muster up the courage to attempt. He captured 14 or 15 bees from a hive in his backyard and put them in a Mason jar. His daughter iced his knee. Aubrey agitated the bees with a shake, flicked the top off the jar, and put it over the aching area. He gave himself 10 or 12 “good stings.” He repeated the process a week later.

That was between 10 and 15 years ago. He hasn’t felt a pain there since. “That knee now, I’d say, is as good as anybody 30 years old — no aches, no pains.”

He learned of the therapeutic power of stings from a book, “Bees don’t get arthritis.”...

Paradise Farms — the business he and his wife, Viola, operate — sells natural bee and honey products on local, national and international markets…

While Viola has been stung only once since 1984 — last year, actually — Aubrey feels a sting as much as seven or eight times a week at certain times of the season.

He admits it hurts — “It’s a hard sting for 30 seconds” — but he welcomes it when one gets him.

“Bee venom has a chemical in it called mellitin, and mellitin is 100 times stronger than cortisone. So, for inflammation on the joint, bursitis, tendonitis, it is fantastic.”…