Sting man
You know you have a good man when your fiancée volunteer's to be your sting buddy. Meet Christian. He is an amazing human. He is artistic, patient, sweet, calm and open minded. He says he believes in the bees. He told me that he has a good feeling about it and that he feels closer to me because he can take part in helping me heal. Might I also add that he is a great bee wrangler. He caught eight bee’s in under 3 minutes. Booyah!
You are probably wondering about things like, doesn’t it hurt? Where do you keep the bee’s?, How do you get a bee to sting you? Do you just stand in a room and let the bees swarm around and hope you get stung? How does this work? How many stings do you need to do and for how long and where? Doesn’t the bee die after it stings you? How did you hear about this and how do you know it works? What if you are allergic!? I’m also sure you are saying to yourself…. This chick is weird.
Here is a little info on how it goes. I would also like to say I didn’t invent the process- there is a phenomenal story in which you can read about here.
I keep my bees in a thing called a bee buddy. It’s a cute little box with a queen pheromone scent and honey feeder in it to keep them calm, fed and happy.
I always have an Epi Pen ready. I started with a test sting to make sure I was not anaphylactic. I sting on the back. Your spinal nerves feed the body, so the venom reaches out from there.
OK so the test sting is in, I take the stinger out right away and wait 20 minutes. My throat didn’t close, and I was ready to go. I then did a full sting by letting the stinger stay in for 20 minutes. By the way, throat closure is a true anaphylactic reaction, whereas swelling around the sting is not. In fact, that’s what I want to see. I will explain later. My goal is to reach ten stings eventually. I sting three days a week with the weekends off. To get the bee to sting you, you simply grab the bee lightly with long tweezers and place it on the skin. It WILL sting you. If it doesn’t want to sting, gently tap the bee on the rear.
There are studies currently being done about the effects of bee venom against Borrelia (Lyme).
A compound in bee venom called melittin is being studied by UNH's Lyme disease research group headed by Eva Sapi, associate professor of biology and environmental science. Lyme disease is caused by the bacteria Borrelia and can shift between different forms in the body, which is part of what makes them so hard to kill. Sapi's lab is testing different bee venoms on all forms of the bacteria, and so far, results from preliminary work done by one of her students look “very promising.”