Bermuda Spa Offers Honey Massages

Bermuda Spa Offers Up a Honey of a Treatment
By Janie Robinson, The Star (Canada), 2/13/2010

TUCKER'S POINT, BERMUDA–There are three things you need to know about Bermuda honey bees.

Dark, delicious Bermuda honey gets its distinctive flavour from the Mexican Pepper tree.

A Bermuda honey spa treatment makes skin silky smooth.

And a Bermuda honey bee sting hurts like hell.

Bermuda's Beekeeper No. 5 honey is a sticky ingredient on the spa menu at the island's new Tucker's Point Hotel & Spa.

And the honey is harvested from the hives of bad-tempered bees right on the grounds of the luxury resort's 80-hectare seaside property, but secreted away in a forest well away from the guests…

Locally harvested aloe and honey are used for the Tribe Road No. 1 Natural Aloe Massage, and Beekeeper No. 5 Honey and Cane Sugar Scrub.

"The Tucker's Point bees are our best producers, but they're also our most aggressive," warns Dejuan Seymour, swathed safe and sound in his beekeeper garb, smoker in hand to calm the bees buzzing busily around their hives.

I'd been warned, so can't really blame the bee for protecting its territory from some tourist who's bugged the beekeeper to tag along.

"A bee sting is said to treat ailments from cancer to multiple sclerosis," says Seymour, giving the stinger still stuck in my hand a quick swipe away, while explaining all about apitherapy – the medical use of honey bee products.

There is evidence that Egyptians used honey to treat wounds 5,000 years ago, and Aristotle later wrote of honey's healing properties.

In fact, honey was used to treat wounds up through World War II, and is still a treatment for various ailments in Africa, India and the Middle East…