Kadivka Stevanović M.D, Niš, Serbia

My experience with apitherapy

I began using propolis, bee venom, honey and pollen for healing myself and my family members about ten years ago.

Here is what my first experience with propolis was like: After his tonsils had been removed my husband suffered from unbearable attacks of cough and sneeze at spring in time of poplar cotton seeds. He got a recipe for propolis in brandy from his fellow beekeepers. He used this extract (20 drops in a cup of lukewarm water) to gargle his throat several times a day. Besides, he drank 20 drops in a cup of tea three times a day. His troubles disappeared in the beginning of therapy and have not reappeared in the following years.

Propolis has a great effect on all negative changes in the mouth. Only a few drops of propolis ease the pain of toothache, gums bleeding, lip blisters, tongue bite or palatal infections.

Small but very unpleasant household burns (caused by hot steam, iron, burner, or oven) can be treated with continual propolis applications until redness disappears.

An acquaintance of mine is very thankful to me for my suggestion to put propolis compress on a foot blister which she had had for thirty years and which was giving her pain when wearing shoes. The blister soon disappeared.

Also, in case of warts, and other skin lesions caused by papilloma virus, everyday application of propolis compress fastened with band-aid will make them disappear.

At the beginning of my apitherapy practice a young women came to me with results of a strong sedimentation of erythrocytes (more than 100 in the first hour). All the examinations did not prove it, but she feared that she had cancer. My assumption that she had low immunity and body collapse caused by stress and great physical strains to which she had been exposed proved right. She drank propolis regularly, 30 drops every day, three times a day, taking one spoonful of honey with that. After two months her sedimentation was stable, and she felt a perfectly healthy person.

Bee sting close to aching point (caused by rheumatism, injury or any pain in knee, hip, wrist, hand, elbow or shoulder) will ease the pain, if you are skillful enough to catch a bee and make her sting wanted place. Stings are to be repeated according to condition or preventively, every season. Bee venom, apitoxin, stimulates microcirculation near the aching part thus increasing nourishing of the tissue, which can rarely be done so successfully with other forms of therapy (physical therapy, pills, ointments, tea, injections, or compresses).

This has been in short my experience with apitherapy. Some of this has been exposed at the Second Serbian Beekeeping Assembly in Aleksinac, September last year. The area of apitherapy being neglected by official and even by traditional medicine demands attention for the sake of good health of our nation, as in other countries in our surroundings – Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Czech, Germany, etc.

Kadivka Stevanović M.D.

Bulevar Nemanjića 75/18, Niš

Phone no. +38118/326 - 538