Can Bee Stings Treat Lyme Disease?

Treatments for chronic Lyme disease are controversial and expensive. As a last resort, some patients are pursuing this unproven and painful alternative.

TEXAS MONTHLY, DECEMBER 2019

Avery was 41 and had been diagnosed with Lyme in 2013, though her symptoms dated back years before that. She told me that it had taken a few months to work up to ten stings; she thought the bee venom was setting off something called a Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction, a response to antimicrobials like antibiotics, in which the bacteria being destroyed release their contents into the bloodstream and cause flu-like symptoms. (It’s not scientifically documented whether venom in fact triggers the same reaction.) “I’m starting to handle it better than at first,” Avery said. “Like I’m not—knock on wood—getting as sick now because the bacterial load is going down, and I think I have a pretty good detox routine.” On the day following a stinging session, the women typically soak in Epsom salt baths, dry brush the skin around their lymph glands, and take coffee enemas—an effort they believe will expel toxins.

Like a nurse giving a vaccine, Gschwind held a bee in tweezers as Avery removed her ice pack. “Okay, ready?” Gschwind asked. “One, two, three.” She held the bee’s butt about an inch to the left of Avery’s lower spine and waited for the tiny stinger to pierce the skin. Then she pulled away the bee, now missing its stinger, which was still drilling into Avery’s back. The vibrating fuzzball was doomed without its barb, and Gschwind placed it in some soapy water to hasten its inevitable end. Afterward, Avery grimaced and breathed deeply as she returned the ice pack to her lower spine, preparing for the next sting.

This process would continue until the bottom portion of Avery’s spine looked like a clear highway running between two parallel rows of five inflamed bumps. Each protrusion was dotted with a stinger, moving like a pumpjack atop a tiny, rising hill, as it continued to gently, rhythmically, excrete venom. Twenty minutes later, when the barbs had done their job and stopped moving, Gschwind extracted them. Then Avery went through the same procedure to sting Gschwind.

While everything about this routine was taxing—the stinging, the seeming Herxheimer reaction, collecting bees and keeping them in her apartment—Gschwind didn’t see much of an alternative. She could not sit on the couch and groan in pain year in and year out while doctors told her she was fine, or that she should be fine, or that she would feel better in time. She’d tried that already. “What am I going to do? Because this isn’t fair. I deserve to have a life, to be functional,” she said. “Well, I guess I’m going to stick myself with bees.”...