This week, you’ll meet Laura the Honey Huntress and hear her talk about Sacred Bee Venom Therapy, aka getting stung by bees on purpose! It’s really not as scary as it sounds. Laura walks you through the logistics, benefits and history of bee sting therapy, as well as sharing her views on the holistic art of apitherapy. Sometimes healing is just on the other side of pain. Bee healed!
You can learn more about Laura on her website: http://www.honeyhuntress.com or check out her YouTube Channel: Evolutionary Abundance
Sacred Bee Venom Therapy with Laura the Honey Huntress – Time to Heal
Laura 0:08
A few moments of pain from a bee sting can do for people is incredible. your quality of life can change completely.
Emily Iannuzzelli 0:24
Welcome to time to heal a podcast about hope and healing. My name is Emily Iannuzzelli and today I’m talking to Laura, the honey hunters about bees and bee sting therapy.
Laura 0:41
Okay, great and go. Okay, so Hi, my name is Laura. I live on the island of Maui in Hawaii. I am super blessed to live out here. I spent 2011 to 2016 on the island and then came back about six weeks before the pandemic started this last January. So it’s been a wild ride, being back on the island. But I came back specifically to work with bees, four seasons a year, because on the mainland, United States mainland most places, you’re not able to work with bees, all four seasons. So that was that’s why I choose to live here in Hawaii. And I came back specifically for a private tour guide job, which disappeared with COVID. But that job was going to be about a three day a week job. So it was going to give me four days a week to work with bees. And with losing that job. Now I have seven days a week to work with. So it was a you know, a blessing in disguise for sure. And I’ve been really just networking and building my business. And my and defining for myself, how I want to share my love for bees with others. You know, the question I always get asked is Oh, do you sell honey, and I don’t actually sell honey. I just sell beekeeping training and Apitherapy, and honey tastings where I host, you know, experiential events where people get to learn about bees, learn about honey, and taste a variety. But I’m not just slinging flinging honey at the farmers market for my main, my main gig. So love that
Emily Iannuzzelli 2:45
I love. Yeah. You know, there’s so many different ways to interact with the things that we love. And
Laura 2:51
absolutely, that’s really cool.
Emily Iannuzzelli 2:53
So, the reason why, you know, one, like the the reason why I invited you to be on the podcast is the podcast about healing is because you practice I have seen it called sacred bee venom therapy, but you just call it apitherapy. What is that?
Laura 3:11
Great question. Great question. Yeah, so what I offer I have titled sacred bee venom therapy. But the practice is really much more encompassing than that on eight the therapy, it’s api, and that root word is the Latin root for B for honeybees. So apitherapy is honeybee therapy, and that encompasses everything that the hive provides us from, from the honey to the bee venom, and then lesser tangible things like the sound and vibrations from the hive, the the scent that comes from the hive, the visuals of seeing a honeybee beat their wings in the sunshine, like all of these things have what I believe to be healing properties. And so it’s pretty incredible once you tap into everything that a honeybee hive creates, because it’s all symbiotic and consumable by humans. There’s nothing that the hive creates that humans can’t consume. Even the baby bees are a source of protein the larvae can be so
Emily Iannuzzelli 4:42
you had a you had a video where you’re eating one Yeah,
Laura 4:46
I mean, it can be a weird and funky and out of our norm out of our social constructs, constructs of, of what we understand our relationship with insects to be but Once you kind of break through that, that box it just opens up to a whole world of of healing and and it’s a full sensory experience going into the hive instead of just like oh sweet honey no you get sweet honey you get pungent stings you get, you know woody earthy propolis which is their, their kind of immunity system substance from tree resin that they coat their hive with for keeping it free of disease. So the the bees are pretty incredible and their ability to heal themselves is phenomenal. You know, they’ve survived much longer than humans have. So as specially as humanity is facing questionable futures about our health, tapping into creatures that have had their health on lockdown for a while, is is a good thing to do.
Emily Iannuzzelli 6:08
Yeah, totally. Wow. Wow, what you just said, I just want to like walk into it.
Laura 6:13
Yeah,
Emily Iannuzzelli 6:15
go visit some bees, I get it that it is cool. Like, I feel like in talking to so many people about healing, like the sensory experiences, like come up so much, you know, and just like really like being present, like with what’s happening. How did you get into working with bees.
Laura 6:34
So it was when I first lived on Maui, I moved here specifically to work on organic farms back in 2011. And I was afraid of bees not like terrified, but I was working in gardens where there would be big flower bushes next to where I had to weed. And as I was weeding the bees would be everywhere. And I would freak out. And some of my co farmers that had been there much longer we’re like Laura, those bees are busy. Like they don’t they don’t care about you. You’re weeding and they’re pollinating. So there’s, they’re not like out to sting a human today, they’re out to pollinate. So I it was a mindset shift from fear to love, where all of a sudden I went from, like, avoidance and, you know, my my blood pressure going up and just feeling on edge and panic, to relaxation and admiration were their buzz, instead of being a threat, all of a sudden became a meditation for me where I, I worked in synchronicity with their work and load with them and I would kind of dance around them as I was working in the garden. And it just, it was the beginning of a beautiful love affair where from there I started to meet beekeepers and met a wonderful young woman who had about 12 hives, and she was very spiritual in her beekeeping where we would sit in front of the hive and sing to the bees and it was a very sweet exchange. And I had a partner at the time who got a job in commercial beekeeping. So he was going to a bee yard of like over 100 hives and busting it out and you know, there was no singing to the bees. They were just working the bees so to contrast Absolutely. So I I kind of I went deep into my own studies and just kind of asked myself, you know, what does beekeeping mean to me? It Am I you know the whoo or the doodoo right. So I I’m a little bit in between I got the whoo and the do. And so sacred bee venom therapy really came to me just through working with the bees and I sought out other beekeepers and sought out farms that were looking to have bees and I just became self trained and self educated and through that got a lot of beestings and for the first first five years of beekeeping, one stain would set my whole you know one sing on the finger would give set my whole arm. inflamed, swollen, like a Popeye arm. And the interesting thing is a lot of people People have that reaction. Most people have that reaction. And most people think that when that happens, they’re allergic to bee stings. But that reactions actually fairly mild reaction. So we’re moderate, I would say if you get a full limb swelled up, that’s, that’s a moderate reaction. It’s not a severe allergic reaction. And so, in reality, only about one in 20,000 people are severely allergic to bee stings, so, but it’s amazing, the more I’m talking about beestings, with people, the more people I come across that say, Oh, I’m allergic, I’m totally allergic. And I’m like, are you really allergic? Or are you did you just have like, one bad swelling once and now you think you’re allergic? So? So that’s where education comes in really, you know, highly is, is people have that fear, just like I did when I first worked on a farm where it was like, I don’t want to get stung, because I’m gonna have this horrible reaction. And that reaction is your body telling you that that is bringing healing to that area. And I’ll let you kind of guide the questions from there because I’m going on a tangent.
Emily Iannuzzelli 11:21
That’s okay. Um, I, I wonder if like that fear, too, makes it worse, right?
Laura 11:29
You know, 100%
Emily Iannuzzelli 11:32
I don’t know, like, tense, right? And like, make it a lot worse.
Laura 11:35
That’s very true. And just the mindset of panic versus the mindset of relaxation, the mindset of acceptance. Yeah. Okay, so
Emily Iannuzzelli 11:47
sacred be even I’m therapy. Can you just describe for us like, what that is? Like, I mean, like, that’s like, you’re singing people with bees, right?
Laura 11:56
Yeah, absolutely. So, for me, um, I worked with an acupuncturist who also stings people. And I learned from her and she was wonderful to work with, but the experience and a lot of the experiences that I was reading about online for people that have Lyme disease and things like that, where they can just order bees and have babies sent to them and, or go to an acupuncturist or something like that, for me, there was this disconnect between the staying, and the actual hive and the bees and where that medicine came from. There wasn’t a huge educational element in the sacredness of this medicine, you know. And so, I wanted to create a practice that I could offer people where I have a hive on my porch on my balcony, and it’s a very intimate experience where people get to come, we spend about a half hour before we even staying just meeting the bees, watching the bees talking about all the elements of the hive, answering any questions that they have. And so just kind of building that relationship for the person. So it there’s more of a connection as to what they’re about to take into their body, and where that came from. So, um, so then from that, you know, initial discussion and and usually I talk with my friends who ever come to whoever comes to participate in this, I talk to them ahead of time to get an idea of where they want to work with the bee venom. And, and so when they come here, we kind of have an idea, and we talk about that more. And then I have massage table where they get to lay outside on the balcony, like just a few feet away from the hive, and get to have that experience like in nature, like with fresh air around them and right next to where it came from. And, and it’s just, it’s just such a beautiful experience, because you really get that that connection and that that more holistic healing instead of just, I’m going to apply bee venom to an area because I know it’s going to help that area. I know it’s going to help overall issue I’m having you just get to tap into a deeper love and when you’re feeling love instead of just looking for resolve result real results. I think that those results are going to come a lot easier because you’re in again, you’re in a better mindset for it. You’re You’re You’re welcoming it, you’re asking for it instead of just expecting it like taking a pill or getting a shot, you’re you’re actually surrendering in a really beautiful way to the medicine. And so I am stinging people. And I take what’s the logistical you know, strategy of this all is I take what’s called a closing tweezers, so you don’t have to hold it closed like you would with like a tweezers you use for your eyebrows. And so it kind of just holds the B and I pinched the B in the thorax, which is between the head and the abdomen. And I it the beat does all the work. I mean, once I catch the B, it’s just a matter of placing it on the body where I want it to sting. And as long as I’m within about the size of a quarter in the area, I’m looking to apply the stinger it it administers the venom appropriately. So these things can be done in three different strategies. One is kind of like acupuncture, where you’re stinging in acupuncture points that have connections to specific meridians along the body and energetic lines that will release, release energy from the sting and release whatever symptoms or issues are associated with that acupuncture point. The other way to apply beestings is localized. So this is a big way that beasting therapy is used as for joint pain, arthritis, as well as scars, scars and tumors. So if you’re doing localized stings, you can be stinging directly in the area of these issues. And that sting essentially is alerting the brain that there’s a problem there. So for example, with arthritis, or chronic pain, a lot of times the brain kind of gives up on those areas, and it’s not sending fresh blood there to address the inflammation and address the issues. So by stinging that area, you’re building the blood and you’re alerting the brain that like oh, this elbow needs some work. And so in most cases with boosting therapy, it’s not a one and done deal. you’re needing to apply the stings regularly and sometimes exponentially, where you’re building the number of stings each session. But I have also heard incredible stories. In fact, a woman I work with here on Maui, she was getting done working with her bees and came out with her suit. And one of the bees came and got stuck in her hair. And as she is trying to get it out of her hair, her boyfriend came up and tried to help and he blew on her hair to try to get this baby out and the became and stung him right on the lip. And on his lip. He had had a scar since childhood and a very noticeable scar, one that he kind of chewed on and was always playing with on right on his lip. And after this bee stung him one time right there on the scar. It disappeared completely. From what I have seen and heard from testimonies is that nothing breaks apart scar tissue better than bee venom. So for people that have really bad scars from accidents or from surgery, it can be really life changing for them to apply a bee venom to the area. And then lastly, as far as application goes, the strategy for lines disease is to apply stings along the side of the spinal cord about an inch out on both sides. And this disperses the venom throughout the entire Nervous System throughout the entire body. So limes disease, as well as any other kind of chronic illnesses like multiple sclerosis, certain types of cancer. What it comes down to at the end of the day, of course is that we can’t make any claims. It is not technically illegal procedure, though. It is not technically illegal. So it can be done with, you know, volunteers who understand the risks. And the acupuncturist that I worked with actually said that it’s better that I’m not a medical practitioner because I, I can’t be sued and lose my license, like my offering is not based on any medical knowledge whatsoever. I am a beekeeper who loves bees, who believes in this therapy and, and is brave enough to offer it to people.
Emily Iannuzzelli 20:39
So that, that doesn’t make it any less healing, right?
Laura 20:43
Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and really this, this practice goes back far beyond what we can even imagine. You know, we know that humans started domesticating bees in the ancient Egyptian and ancient Chinese days. But I think, I think our understanding of bee venom medicine goes even before that, because so much of what we’re understanding today about bee venom therapy has happened through accidents, like my friend getting stung on the lip. The woman that is leading the voice for bee venom therapy for Lyme disease, was fell into a hive of Africanized bees and got over hundreds of stings. And she was in her end stages of Lyme disease and started to recover. And so her story is phenomenal. She was actually out on a walk could barely walk at the time, she had been through 20 years of every possible remedy for Lyme disease, and was pretty much on her deathbed and was walking with her caretaker who was helping her Shuffle Along. And as they’re shuffling along, this hive of Africanized bees attack them and the caretaker books, it knows her there. So she is Oh, another blessing in disguise, she was left to be stung by these bees, which ended up saving her life in the long run. So it’s uh,
that’s incredible. What’s
Emily Iannuzzelli 22:24
her name?
Laura 22:25
Ellie Lobel. Ellie Lobel. Yeah, I’m a huge voice for bee venom therapy for Lyme disease, pretty much the voice, she travels the world talking about it. And she’s now completely cured from Lyme disease. So her her protocol is, is kind of the basis for any Aapitherapy protocols. Technically, there are no set protocols. So for myself, for example, the stings that I offer, people aren’t based on any prior knowledge of Yes, if I sting you here, it will have x results, you know, it’s just, it’s experimental. And a lot of that experimenting, I do on myself. In fact, this morning, I woke up, we just had a lot of rain here in Hawaii yesterday. And my hive had three bees that had fallen into one of my plants below it. And they were, they were done for they had gotten like rained out, they were like, in there, they were just kind of crawling around the plant, you know, on their last moments. And so when I, when I do sting myself, at least with bees, I try to wait until there’s a bee that I know is already exiting. And I can it kills them right to Yeah, it does. Um, and so if I know that, you know, like if I’m going into the hive and I kind of crushed one, and I know that they’re not going to survive, I’ll set it aside and use that for a sting because the way I see it is so many bees don’t sting anybody. And they never get to fulfill that full expression of their being right. And so to give the bee an opportunity to sting in its last moments, I think is a really beautiful experience for that bee to get to to live out its life that way. The other thing that I love to just bring into people’s awareness with this because I am friends with and work with a lot of vegans and I appreciate the vegan philosophy to life is that a honeybee hive is a super organism and it functions a lot in the same way a mammal does in the same way human does in that our bodies regenerate cells every day. We have ELLs that die and cells that are born. So for for a honeybee hive that the bees individually are like the cells of the hive. And each day the Queen lays 2000 eggs, but the hive naturally loses about 1000 bees. So that generation of cells, that generation of bees is a natural cycle daily, and of the 1000 bees that the hive just naturally loses from, from death and age and getting lost while foraging. You know, if I take one or two, or a handful to sting someone, it’s not gonna affect the overall vitality of the hive. And so I just like to make people aware of that when they’re like you’re killing bees, that’s like I am. But those bees are part of a natural cycle for that hive. And I’m not going in taking over if that was the bees the day so so but it is something to be cautious of with the ability to order bees online for bee venom therapy is that you are sourcing them from a sustainable source and from beekeepers that are treating their bees with natural and organic beekeeping techniques. So you’re not getting bees that are covered in chemicals that the hives are being treated with and more commercial beekeeping. So ideally, the best thing to do is to make friends with your local beekeeper, and try to source bees as locally as possible.
Emily Iannuzzelli 26:41
Wow, that’s so interesting. I’m wondering, given all of this, how do you think about healing?
Laura 26:48
Hmm, that’s a good question.
I think, like we did talk about before a little bit, it is gonna be different for everybody. But I think at the end of the day, because there isn’t one approach that can be standardized for all, it’s in looking at a more holistic approach, you know, looking at an approach that doesn’t just have one prong to it that doesn’t just have one element, like taking a medication or, you know, changing your diet or doing more exercise, all those things can be helpful on their own. But at the end of the day, I think healing is is always holistic, it always has to be more than one thing. In the case with bees, you know, with beasting therapy. Any responsible ape, a therapist, someone who practices bee sting therapy, is going to make sure that whoever they practice on has tried other steps First, that this is kind of a last resort. And I say that with a extra cautionary tone. Because the end of the day beats beasting therapy is extremely potent and dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. So as much as I believe in it, and love to talk about it. It’s also something that might not be right for you, you know, and and so approaching healing, it has to be a very, a very surrendering experience where you try many things sometimes before you find your right recipe. But I think it’s in trying a range of strategies, a range of healing practices, that each of us find our own recipe, each of us find what resonates with us, you know, the bees resonate with me so completely, but for someone else, in their, in their fear could make that medicine completely wrong for them. So, yeah, I think healing is a very individualized and personal and intimate process. But I think the more each of us can open to finding what that healing is through multiple, multiple means will give us the best results in the end.
Emily Iannuzzelli 29:53
I mean, as someone who’s making a podcast about many different healing modalities, I love that.
Laura 29:58
Yeah, exactly.
Emily Iannuzzelli 30:00
To me very much.
Um, let’s say that there are people listening though who maybe have never heard of this before, and are afraid to try it. What would you share? What would you say to them? Well,
Laura 30:18
there’s a wonderful gentleman named Don Dom’s who’d actually just passed a couple months ago. He’s kind of the grandfather of Apitherapy. He’s the old Midwest beekeeper super simple, big hearted grandfather character. And I watched a seminar of his recently, it was like a five part YouTube video series, he was speaking at an organic beekeeping conference. And he said, it’s about quality of life. And, and that’s what I would tell anyone that is fearful of going into this medicine, if they’ve tried everything else, and they’re suffering. And they feel that this could help them, but they’re afraid. At the end of the day, it comes down to your quality of life. And what a few moments of pain from a beasting can do for people is incredible, your quality of life can change completely, where you no longer have debilitating symptoms of Lyme disease, where your tumors shrink, where, you know, your pain and your joints is relieved, and you can play with your grandchildren again. I think, I think that is the most beautiful way to put it is a small sacrifice of of pain to relieve a lifetime of suffering. And, and, and that is, that is what I would tell someone that that fears this practice is that it could just bring a whole new life. One of the videos he starts his talk with is a little wiener dog dish, Shawn. That couldn’t it was paralyzed from the hips down, couldn’t use its bladder, its colon. And it had, you know, a life expectancy of maybe a few more weeks. And they started singing it. And they started singing it a lot. And it regained use of its hind legs, its colon, its bladder, and it lived another five years. And it would squirm when it got all those things when it started to regain back that feeling it’s squirmed and wiggled, but it lived another five years. So. So that kind of life quality and life extension. You can’t You can’t say anything bad about that. Yeah.
Emily Iannuzzelli 33:19
That’s amazing. Wow. All right. So where can people follow you or find you?
Laura 33:27
Absolutely. Um, my handle and my brand and business is the honey Huntress. So my website is just http://www.honeyhuntress.com. My Instagram is the honey Huntress at at the honey Huntress. Yeah, those are kind of my two best spots. I’m a big instagrammer. And my website, I do have a YouTube channel called the honey Huntress adventures.
But yeah, my
website or Instagram is gonna be the best place to find me.
Emily Iannuzzelli 33:59
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. Is there anything else that you were thinking of? Like in preparing for this or that came up that we didn’t touch on in the questions? Yeah, I
Laura 34:10
think, um, you had sent me one of the questions in the email, kind of talked about, you know, teetering on this edge of healing and, and pain and, or healing and hurting. And, you know, we’ve talked about that a bit and just, you know, what, what that sacrifice means as far as far as quality of life goes, but I just wanted to read a little bit from a book that I have called sweetness and light, the mysterious history of the honeybee by a woman named Katie Ellis. And it says, bees came to be portrayed as special creatures that could move between life and death between the world and the underworld, between humans and Divine. So like that almost even brings tears to my eyes I get so. So in awe of the beauty of honeybees and their role as these special creatures, these messengers in our world to bring us food bring us medicine bring us life, they literally literally would not exist without honeybees. And the fact that they can prolong our life and improve our quality of life on top of that, is just is just divine. And so I just wanted to share that reverence with you all and and, and just ask that with every bite of food that you take, and every bit of honey that you enjoy that you say a prayer of gratitude, and that you honor these special creatures that share this vitality with us every day.
Emily Iannuzzelli 36:08
Oh my gosh, I love that. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.
Laura 36:13
Thank you for letting me articulate that.
Emily Iannuzzelli 36:26
Thank you so much to Laura for sharing her wisdom with us today. And thank you for listening. You can learn more about Laura by clicking the links in the show notes or visiting her website. She also just launched a YouTube channel called evolutionary abundance which is really cool that you could check out a transcript of this episode can be found on the website time to heal podcast.wordpress.com a Braille version is also available upon request. Thank you to my very talented friend Jesse Blake Rundle for his gorgeous music. You can listen to his album radishes and flowers on Spotify or bandcamp. thank you as always to my dear and talented friend Erin Drew. Check out her company on brand voice for innovative voiceover and copywriting solutions. You know the drill subscribe to this podcast. To get alerts about new episodes, subscribe to our newsletter on the website, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, connect with us on Facebook. Reach out if you have a story about healing we want to get to know you. Most importantly this week go thank the bees. See you next time.
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