in a world brimming with complexity few creatures embody harmony like the honeybee with tireless precision she dances from bloom to bloom each motion guided by millennia upon millennia of instinct each act in service to the whole and then There are the beekeepers, watchful stewards
of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist, part poet, they move along their hives with the efficiency of mow, levy and curly, tending to the bees' needs as best they can comprehend, and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their journey. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping presented by our good friends and partners in
beekeeping. Man Lake. Today we're going all the way to Romania for the first in our series about everything Apitherapy. Our guest is the world's leading authority on Apitherapy, Dr. Stefan Stangaciu, MD. If you've ever wanted to learn more about the healing properties and benefits of honey, propolis, bee venom, pollen, royal jelly, even bee air and more, I think you'll really enjoy
hearing from Dr. Stefan. He and I could have talked for hours and hours, but we tried to keep it succinct enough to fit into two or three episodes. In part one today, we dig deep into the healing benefits of propolis and also learn the best way to extract honey. for medicinal and health purposes. First, I've just got to mention this lantern fly honey that's all the buzz right now. One person described it as, instead of the gentle sweet taste of regular honey, it's more like
your grandparents cough drops. This dark reddish mysterious honey has been described by a professional taster as having notes of smoky, savory, salty, resinous, and lightly fruity. Some people absolutely love it, some just think it's weird, but no, really the weird part is how it's made. You see, lanternflies secrete a sticky, sugary substance after slurping on tree sap in late summer and
fall. That's secretion. also known as poop, is sucked up by honey bees taken back to their hives and treated like nectar, eventually becoming honey, lanternfly honey. So if you're offered some new lanternfly honey, at least now you'll know what you're putting in your mouth. I am unbelievably excited today because we have a guest You all know that I'm interested in apotherapy, and we have today who I think is the world's foremost authority on apotherapy, and he is over
in Romania, Dr. Stefan Stengetu. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me here. And I paused because I wanted to make sure I pronounced your name properly. Did I get close? You are very good, very good, very good. Thank you so much. Hey, before we jump into the down and dirty of really what apotherapy is, give us a little bit of your background so people realize your qualifications both in the medical field and you're a beekeeper too. Okay, yes.
So I'm a medical doctor. I'm a specialist in family medicine. And I have also what are called like over specializations in acupuncture and apiphytoaromatherapy. So apitherapy is the B products for health. Phytotherapy is like herbal medicine. And aromatherapy, everybody knows. And I discovered the bees in 1991. When I heard about the Keepers having unbelievable healing successes, beekeepers who were not medical doctors,
and still they got excellent results. So I went, I spoke with these people and I said, wow, wow, it's very interesting. So if a normal person, a beekeeper can heal better than the doctors, certain diseases, I said, this is something very
interesting. So I need to study. So I went to Bucharest, Bucharest and Bucharest, it were at the time two big libraries on beekeeping, but So if a lot of articles and books on AP therapy, and this was in 1991, I started one summer long, all these books I copied, photocopied everything I can, I could. And then I started to put all this information in a nice order according to traditional Chinese medicine, because I studied already before that traditional Chinese medicine.
And the Chinese medicine has a kind of thinking which is very interesting. It's kind of a mnemonic method, like Yin and Yang, the five elements. And then when you have in front of your eyes these symbols, they are like filters helping you to diagnose and also to establish a treatment. So after 1991, after I started to treat my own patients with apitherapy, at the beginning I
made mistakes. For example, some of the patients I put too many bestings too soon, not detoxing the body, not taking all the other measures. So six, seven patients have had allergic reactions. Fortunately, it were not big allergic reactions, but still was uncomfortable. So step by step I learned and then I started to give lectures in other countries. And my strategy, if you want, was to, I was giving books or articles or knowledge.
and in exchange I've got other knowledge on other books and other journals and so on from the people I was visiting. So now we have in Romania one of the best apitherapy databases in the world. I am now the president of the International Federation of Apitherapy. I was 20 years president of the German Apitherapy Society and I organized there over 20 international events with speakers from all over the world. And I'm also president of the Romanian Apitherapy, Phytotherapy and Aromatherapy
Society. So I'm telling you this just to tell you that there are so many people in apitherapy all over the world. So I calculated over 100 ,000 apitherapy practitioners in almost every country, except Antarctica. In every country where there are bees, there are also apitherapy practitioners. During all these years, of course, I refined step by step my treatment protocols, my thinking. And what is amazing, every day I
learn new things. So it's unbelievable. The topic is really huge because the bees are living beings. The bee colony is extremely complex and we learn a lot from them. Wow. The topic is huge. And so I hardly know where to start because there's so much to cover. I'm tempted to keep you here longer than we earlier agreed to to have two sessions come out of this, but we'll see how it goes. Give us an overall idea. A lot of us
have heard of bee sting therapy. Some of us have even messed around with it a little bit, but I know that you have experience with other hive products. Tell us everything from the bee hive that you use. And I'm guessing it's everything. Yes, yes, yes, you are right. It's everything. And most people, they know about honey. And also one other thing, unfortunately, most beekeepers, they focus in the production only to honey. And this is a huge missed opportunity because I give
you just a short explanation here. If you look, the health is more important than food, than nutrition. Categorical is more important than health. For the beekeeper who wants to survive on the market because of the prices and so on and so on, the idea to sell his honey as a food is a bad idea. If you look to the health element, the honey is very, very important for the healing properties like antioxidant, antibacterial, antiviral, anti -inflammatory, and so on, because it contains
several groups of substances. And one of the most important is the one on polyphenols. Now, in the pollen you find like 50 times more polyphenols than in honey. And in propolis, you find like 200 times more. So if you want to have a healing effects, pollen, bee bread, propolis are much more important than honey. And the price is that the sales of the beekeeper when they go on these
other products. can give to the beekeeper enough amount of money to be able to survive and not only to survive to go to higher levels like to open for example we'll discuss maybe later a bee house for beehive air therapy okay now this is a short introduction there are some other mistakes the beekeepers are doing for example centrifugation the honey centrifugation from the apitherapy point of view. It's also a mistake. The best honey is the one which is like slowly,
slowly pressed or dripping honey. And the best method is to have a sterile container. And then you have a frame. Then you make like small pouches. How do you call it? Like you sting each cell of the hexagonal of the comb. You need to open
up the cappings. Yes, but you do it not not brutally like classical like all of them once just in each hexagonal cell you make one small or say like two small holes and the honey will drip slowly slowly here and the contact of honey with air will be limited and this is the main problem in centrifugation because in centrifugation A small amount of honey is spread with big force on the internal wall of this cylinder and the honey is exposed to huge amounts of air and air
contains oxygen and oxygen oxidizes. So a part of the polyphenols of the honey which are antioxidant are destroyed by this oxidation. It's not a strong oxidation but still it's an oxidation. The other bad thing is that in the air, the air is not sterile. The air in a PRE, where there is no centrifugation room, the air is full of microbes
and spores and viruses. If you ask a physician, no, not a physician, a physicist, how many dust particles are in the air, they will tell you that in one cubic meter, is there are like 200 ,000 to 400 ,000 dust particles. So practically, the beekeeper brings centrifugation, oxidizes the honey, and contaminates the honey. If you ask a specialist in microbiology, they will tell you that on these dust particles, every third, fourth dust particle may have a virus on it.
So it's really a contamination of the honey. And the third very, very bad thing which is happening because of this huge contact surface with the air, the honey loses a lot of aromas, a lot of essential oils, a lot of perfumes. And these essential oils are very powerful antimicrobial, antiviral, anti -inflammatory. And you know, when you take a honey, as it is very fresh from the beehive, from the honeycomb, the taste is
wonderful, the aroma is wonderful. But the same frame when you make centrifugation, and then you put in the jar, is not any more so aromatic. So the problem for apitherapy is that if you have this excessive centrifugation and if the beekeeper also is using a lot of smoking the quality of honey will diminish and as a result of this the healing effect will not be so powerful. So you lose time and this is not good to have it, to lose it. Alright, I have to interject
a couple of quick things here. And that is if you're a commercial beekeeper with a thousand or ten thousand hives, it's probably not realistic that you can harvest honey that way. But if you have a few hives, it sounds like maybe this is something that you can do. Can I give the contra argument to this? Yes. Yeah, please. Yes. Yes. So. when that commercial beekeeper will get for his honey let's say 20 -30 % more money than before you will find the technical solutions.
And the human mind is unbelievably creative. Now imagine that instead of having these complicated machines with the, like pushing the frames one after another and then the uncapping and then centrifugation, there are so many operations. Here it will be just like, you know, like acupuncture. Imagine a table, like with thousands needles.
which looks upwards and you make a system where you put 100 such frames on top of this system with thousand needles let's say and then just a short tuck all of them once then a bit like this and then you replace all the this needles part with the containers and then you do some other things of course the dripping of honey will not be so fast like going out of the cells but the time to do centrifugation and also to wait then three days for the air to go out of
the honey. And then you put the honey into the barrel. So like if you compare three days with maybe one hour, it's a big difference. The other problem for the quality of the honey, for medicinal beekeeping, we need the honey which has almost no bacteria. And now, to be very, very sincere, if you ask 100 commercial beekeepers, you ask them, how do you do, you start the centrifugation. Let's say at the end of the season, you got 1 ,000 beehives and you want to do that centrifugation.
So they use these centrifugation machines. And normally, after each centrifugation in the evening, they need to sterilize the container. to wash with hot water and sterilize it. And then ask them to be very sincere. How many of them are doing every evening this cleansing of the machine inside? Maybe one in 20. So what is happening? So they do day after day centrifugation in the same centrifuge without cleaning it every evening.
As a result of this, if you make microbial analysis in the first day, and let's say after 10 days, the amount of microbes in the honey grows, grows, grows, grows, grows. Because the dust particles, I told you, they contaminate the honey. So there are many, many arguments. So my advice, because we are on this topic, to the commercial beekeepers, at least for their own health, for their own family. Let's say they have 1 ,000 colonies.
They can put aside from this 1 ,000 colonies, let's say 50 colonies to make for apitherapy, for health, for their own family. And then they'll get step -by -step accustomed, comfortable with these other systems. And then they will expand. It may seem early, but right now is a great time to order your live bees for 2026 because they do sell out and because Man Lake is offering a discount for Be Love Podcast listeners. Wait, what? I know you're saying live bees, they never
go on sale. Well, they are now. Click on over
to Man Lake, order your bees any variety. nukes or packages and anything in the beginner essentials category and when you check out use the code get started in bees it's down in the show notes so you don't have to remember for a discount on everything so get your orders in early and save yeah just to give an incentive about the prices you know very well all American people all over all the beekeepers all over the world they know now about the manuka honey model so
manuka honey a normal honey i would say a bit more different substances there but it's a normal honey and still the final price of manuka honey in germany in manuka honey form of tube like 20 grams of manuka honey medicinal honey it's 40 euro so 20 grams which is a soup spoon so if you made the calculation it goes to 2000 euro per kg of honey Okay, so why not to go into this direction? And because the health again is much more important than simple nutrition or simple
food. Yeah, it's great marketing. Yeah, people. It's fantastic marketing. Okay, let's talk about propolis. Okay. Now, with the propolis, it's
also a huge topic. The best things. uh in the mind when you explain also to the to the patients to the customers to everybody you need to start from the plants which are producing the resin and balsams which the bees collect to make their own propolis now here is an interesting correlation the trees which are making these resins and balsams or the shrubs mostly trees and shrubs they are fixed living beings they have the roots and they cannot move and it's a funny kind of saying when
a tree has a disease cannot go to the hospital so it cannot go to the neighbor to ask for help so what is the tree to do when it has a disease bacterial viral and so the tree must produce its own remedies okay so in the trees are on earth for millions of years. So they went through all these glaciations and all this huge amount of years and they were constantly attacked by other living beings like bacteria, fungus, parasites, even viruses. You can say that they're partially
living being for millions of years. So the trees, they developed a method to defend. And here is a very, very interesting aspect. If you compare the trees in the pharma industry, the trees are much, much more clever than the pharma industry regarding the antibiotics. The pharma industry is using antibiotics based on only one molecule. The agriculture industry uses also one kind of
insecticide, one substance. And when you take an insect or you take a microbe, or a virus with only one molecule if you keep in mind that the bacteria for example has thousands hundreds of thousands of different molecules and the bacteria are very intelligent at their level, they speak together, they communicate together, they create all kinds of defense mechanisms. So one molecule
is a big mistake. If you look maybe, you know, in the past it was a substance, an insecticide called DDT and it was against the Colorado bugs. Okay, so now you can use one ton of DDT and the Colorado bugs are laughing at you. What is Mother Nature doing? Mother Nature, in the last millions of years, when the tree is attacked by viruses or bacteria, they create these protective substances around the buds and also on the bark inside and
also inside the leaves. And there is a cocktail of substances, extremely, extremely complex, with hundreds of substances, different substances, which are destroying the viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites through different mechanisms. So this allows the trees to survive. Of course, sometimes there are bacteria or viruses which are very aggressive and may destroy some of the trees, but they will not destroy usually all the forests or all the trees. And now the incredible part
about this, I read a study made in England. They analyzed this cocktail of substances which are protecting the birds. to various poplars because they understood, the beekeepers understood that the bees they like to go to poplars, to the black poplars. The Latin name is Populus nigra. And then they went to analyze the buds, the composition of these buds, like it were, let's say, 10 poplars in a row. They analyzed the composition of these buds, poplar number 1, number 2, number 3, number
10. And when they analyzed the laboratory, they were surprised to see that there were differences from 3 to 3. It was not the same standard substance like pharma industry is using with the antibiotics. And then the even bigger surprise was when the same team of researchers, they went next year to the same area, they analyzed again the composition of these poplar buds, and then they saw that the same tree, which last year was having a certain composition, this year, like next year, it was
another composition. So the intelligence of the trees is... In order to fight an enemy, I need multiple weapons, I need multiple strategies, and I need to change these strategies every year. So the bees, which are also attacked by bacteria, virus, fungus, parasites for millions of years, Of course, they need to have also this protection.
And because they have a smell, extraordinary smell with their antennae, like 100 times better than the dogs, they smell and they analyze the nature around and they found out the best sources of such substances. And then they go, they collect these resistant balsams and then they make their propolis inside the beehive with adding some beeswax inside. So propolis, if you see it from this point of view, You understand the propolis is very good and has protected the bees for so
many years. There are some very, very interesting research now in Minnesota, I believe, is Professor Marla Spiebach. She showed that a bee hive which has more propolis inside is healthier, has less varroa. So this is another element here. And then the beekeepers during thousands of years, not hundreds of, but thousands of years, They understood that propolis protects the bees and this was the beauty they started to use for their own health. So now we have a huge industry on
propolis. There are over 30 -40 different types of formulations like you have eye drops, you have capsules, tablets, nose sprays for ears, for the stomach, even intravenous you can do propolis extracts, water extract, alcoholic extract or oil extract. So practically for every anatomical part of the body we have a special preparation. And then for the good doctors who are using apitherapy, using propolis, the art is to use the right amount, to use the right administration formula through
what anatomical way. And usually there is like a golden rule, when you use more anatomical ways, you administer the product through more anatomical ways, you have a faster healing. Let's say that A beekeeper, they have their own bees and they want to, from a practical standpoint, use propolis or honey for their own personal health for their family. What kinds of things would it work for? And I should have asked you this about honey before we moved on. We'll come back to that.
But for propolis, what do I use it for? Is it for a sore throat? What's it for? Good question. Very good. So for the beekeeper, the best kind of extract of propolis is the hydroalcoholic extract, which is called the tincture. And if you look all over the world, all countries, they use propolis mainly in this form. and this is correct because the scientists they found out that in order to extract these polyphenols the
best solvent is alcohol. My suggestion to to your listeners is not to take those recipes from 50, 60 years ago, because it was a recipe like something like this, like you take 20, 30 grams of raw propolis and you put in 70, 80 milliliter of alcohol and you put in a dark place and you let it there stay for three weeks and then three times per day you... do this shaking okay so this is the old old system now there are modern methods to get the extraction of properties not
in three weeks but in one day even in one hour so these methods are based on the concept of like the question funny question is in that old books it was written three times per day you should shake the solution and my question is when i'm giving lectures is why only three times per day Why not 10 times per day? Why not 100 times per day? Why not 1 ,000 times per day? Why not to use a machine which makes non -stop
this movement? When you combine these kind of machines which are moving non -stop the solution, of course, the contact between alcohol and properties will be better, instruction is better. Now there is another modern method, a very good one, faster than this one, which I'm telling you. is there are devices called ultrasonicators. The ultrasonicators are devices where you have like a water bath like a container and below here is the electrical
part which heats the solution. You set the heating how much you want to be the solution heated and then you can have also activate with the button the ultrasounds. So the ultra sounds are making this movement of the molecules and the heat also is the Brownian movement at the molecular level. It's also much, much faster like this because of the heat. So with this method, you can get an extraction of propolis maybe in one hour.
And when you know that the extraction is finished, when you see that the solution has the same color, it doesn't change the color. like before was alcohol was transparent propolis was here and here so when the solution the color is constant and also when the taste of the solution is constant it's normally it's finished the the extraction yeah okay so you get this tincture from from this from this water bath and then There are
several situations here. So first of all, it depends on who is taking the propolis and is there to take it. If it's a strong beekeeper, has not special diseases, it's no problem to take the tincture in some honey. Let's say 10 drops of propolis tincture in a teaspoon of honey and then prepare separately some tea and then they can take it directly. If they want to treat the child or the woman, let's say the woman is pregnant or somebody old in the family, the alcohol
from the tincture may be too strong. There are no studies, they say that alcohol in any amount is not good for the body. In this situation, We have the propolis tincture, like I have here this propolis tincture. And then I will put drops, one drop here, one drop here, one drop here, one drop here. So small amounts on a sterile plate. And then I wait for the alcohol to evaporate. So once the alcohol evaporates, and this is very simple, I don't need a special laboratory, then
I can get this. extract if you say like it's called soft propolis extract or some honey some crystallized honey or you know a piece of bread or some more cooked rice and then you can use it internally. This is the easiest way to do it but there are other ways to do it if there are people for example in the family somebody who smokes a lot somebody who has the the skin is very dry they have less fats in the body the
alcohol tincture will be a bad idea. But if you make the propolis not tincture, you do not use the alcohol as a solvent, but you use oil, like olive oil, sunflower oil, pumpkin oil, argan oil, any oil which is cold pressed, then you get an oil propolis extract. So this one you can use in the nose. You can use in any surfaces where the alcohol is not recommended, like genital area, for example, or you can make preparations in the form of suppositories or ovules. There
are hundreds of possible applications here. And now to give you in what kind of diseases. The list is huge, Eric. It's huge. So I research the literature, scientific literature, all up in Mondial Congresses, all the books in over 60 countries where I visited. And if you take, it's like at least 500 diseases. If you take just one thing, properties has about 70 useful properties. And let's say we take only antioxidant.
or you take only anti -inflammatory, then if you remember on the names of diseases, all diseases which have as a word the last letters of the disease is itis, like conjunctivitis, rhinitis, glossitis, otitis, esophagitis, pharyngitis, gastritis. whatever enteritis and so on, all ITs, all from inflammations. And Propolis is excellent as anti -inflammatory agent. Why? Because Propolis attacks simultaneously many causes which
create inflammation. So if the inflammation is caused like fire, like free radicals, like smoking or heat or a burn, propolis blocks very quickly the free radicals. There are hundreds of studies which says that propolis is antioxidant because it blocks the free radicals. Then many other inflammations are given by viruses and propolis is antiviral. Other inflammations are given by bacteria. Propolis is antibacterial. Other are
given by fungi. propolis is anti -mycotic, anti -fungal, or it's parasites, malaria, and so on and so on, giardia, propolis is also anti -parasitic. So when you have this combination of antioxidant plus antiviral, antibacterial, anti -mycotic, anti -parasitic, practically at least 80 % of the inflammations you can reduce, you can eliminate them. The only other big cause of inflammation is trauma. When I have a trauma, a heat, bone fracture, whatever, there are cells which are
destroyed. And then in this situation, propolis helps also, but through other very interesting mechanisms. When you have dead cells in a certain area, like after bee stings, for example, there are special cells here under the skin or in the tissue. which needs to clean the area. They need practically to eat the dead cells or the bacteria as they are there. And these cells are called macrophages and some of them are also neutrophils or dendritic cells. But macrophages are the most
important. Now, if you give propolis to this area, but also you... tell the patient to swallow propolis or to inhale propolis in form of solutions for nebulization or aerosols. Then these macrophages get more power and then they clean faster the area of dead cells and cleaning faster that area. This is wonderful because the risk to get infection there will decrease too. So the healing time will decrease too. We can speak on propolis Eric,
one week is not finished. I can tell any of these topics we could speak on for 10 hours and so we'll try to, listeners, we will try to keep things as practical as we can and we hope to at least touch on besides honey and propolis, royal jelly, wax, beehive air, be venom, definitely, be bread, be pollen. Let's Dr. Stefan. Let's jump back to honey for just a minute. How should
I use honey? Medicinally and by the way, I recently had experience using it on a burn Why don't you tell us about that and some other things to use it for? Thanks again to Dr. Stefan Stangichu in part two. We'll dive deep into treating burns with honey, bee venom therapy, and a whole bunch more. Until then, be sure to follow, subscribe, and tell your friends about Bee Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. And a shout out to Vita
Bee Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes Apistan, Apigard, and now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, see you next week.