About the project In 2017, we emphasized the importance of apitherapy within the scope of our EU Project aiming at the Importance of Bee Products for Human and Animal Health. At the end of this project, we saw that beekeepers play a key role in the effectiveness of bee products in human and animal health. In this process, we saw that beekeepers, whose main purpose is to produce honey, are unaware of the importance and value of propolis, bee venom, bee bread, and drone larvae in addition to honey and pollen.
In this process, we saw that beekeepers unknowingly make many production mistakes in beekeeping practices.
We saw that beekeepers place their hives in all kinds of environments without paying attention to environmental conditions and environmental pollution in order to strengthen the hive and obtain nectar to produce honey. We know that beekeepers use chemicals such as medicine, antibiotics, etc. uncontrolled and unnecessary. These chemicals leave residues in all bee products. In addition, it has been observed that beekeepers do not apply the correct harvesting method of bee products such as honey containing pollen, propolis, bee venom, etc., do not know the conditions of these products, or do not apply them completely.
Apitherapy applications, the use of bee products for human and animal health have taken their place in the field of supportive medicine in many countries. There are more than 4000 publications on propolis in PubMed alone., Many studies have been conducted regarding the positive effect of propolis on Covid 19 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-020- 02619-1 and Giovanna Giovinazzo et al . 2020…). In some countries, propolis has taken its place as a medicine. However, when beehives are left near asphalt, close to residential areas, bees collect sticky substances such as asphalt, paint, etc. as propolis Beekeepers usually collect propolis by scraping the hive. It is not right to collect propolis from the hive by scraping it for cleaning the hive. This propolis may contain drug and chemical residues. Beekeepers' uninformed use of drugs leaves residues in bee products such as honey and bee bread. It has been observed that the use of these products for both nutrition and apitherapy purposes will cause more harm than good. Mistakes such as using honey containing chemical residues in wound healing, using bees and bee larvae affected by environmental pollution, and using pollens that have lost their volatile phenological components due to drying in the sun will cause more harm than good to humans.
The demand for bee products for apitherapy purposes will increase day by day. For these reasons, it has been observed that beekeepers should be trained, quality natural bee products should be produced, and bee products should be used in apitherapy from beekeepers with certified production and hives with controlled production. In the coming years, other bee products will bring more income to beekeepers along with honey sales. Therefore, other bee products should also be produced in a healthy way. It is important to teach the production of apitherapy products at certain standards from production to market for human and animal health and a healthy environment. It is also important to raise awareness of relevant legislators, relevant organizations and consumers on this issue.
In particular, not harming nature as much as possible, not using pesticides and other drugs or correct applications will directly positively affect human and animal health. For these reasons, this project called MEDICAL BEEKEEPING FOR BEEKEEPERS was carried out in order to fill a major gap in the subject. We hope that the project results will be useful to all beekeepers and everyone involved in apitherapy.