Honey bee venom should be used under medical prescription

"Not everyone reacts in the same way to treatments; for this reason, each case should be studied by a physician or a specialist," asserted Jorge Tello, zootechnician and Professor of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Husbandry of Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

The director of the apiarian group of Universidad Nacional de Colombia mentioned that many good properties have been found in bees, such as honey, pollen, royal jelly, and apitoxin, among others. "The venom has been investigated and it has proved to be effective to treat some diseases such as arthritis; the problem is finding the raw materials used to process it," asserted the director.

According to Tello, when using this substance, it is necessary to take into account that as soon as it touches the skin, it produces inflammation and the reaction becomes more painful as the body assimilates the apitoxin.
For extracting the venom from bees, some safety measures and sanitary procedures are necessary to diminish the oxidation of the product and to avoid losing its biological value.

Regarding the amount of the dose, the specialist insists that it has to be decided by a responsible physician, since the patient could suffer from an overdose.

Principles
The zootechnician indicates that the current treatment, in which patients are directly exposed to the bees, is "cruel" and violates several principles:
1.    Unnecessarily pain is caused to a patient who is already suffering from pain.
2.    Since the administration method is through the skin, the bee"s sting can cause an inflammatory and allergic reaction, event to the point of causing death.
3.    The bee"s sting could also inject fungi and bacteria that the patient did not have before, causing certain reactions in the immune system.
4.    It is not possible to dose the substance in an accurate way, a situation that could cause an overdose.
Many experts have to be part of the process of using this venom as a medical product. The production is in charge of zootechnicians, the technical elaboration is in the hands of biologists and the dose is mandatorily in charge of physicians.