IV.1. THE NEED OF HONEY BEE THERAPEUTIC PRODUCTS

One of the greatest problems of any apitherapeutist is the possibility to have on hand, so he can prescribe them, the honey bee therapeutic products containing the therapeutic agents that he considers necessary to achieve the therapeutic pursued target. Of course, to be able to advise them to the patients, they should be found out in the commerce, or be produced by each apitherapeutist, depending on the conditions they treat.

In Romania, as elsewhere in the world, the standardized honey bee therapeutic products with rigorous pharmacokinetic determined action are few. The best known are: the royal jelly - injectable or oral - or the various forms of honey bee therapeutic products which are based on propolis (which may have allergenic effects) or the bee venom (it has a high therapeutic potential in certain conditions, but its administration should be cautious, being limited mostly by its allergenic and hemolytic actions). However, the production of the standardized honey bee therapeutic products requires not only the teamwork of the researchers, pharmacists and doctors, but also highly complex technical equipments. Such a concerted action, coordinated and to the high scientific parameters, would be advantageous not only for the apitherapeutists, but it would also be in the best interests of the health of patients.

Obviously, the source of the substances that are in the structure of the huge game of medicines of farmacochemical production is the nature itself. The beekeeping, through the agency of the bee, can provide the standardized drugs production, without exaggeration, with almost all the substances which have a different origin than the source of the hive products. Moreover, the bee offers substances and combinations of substances that can not be replicated in the laboratory, but which have a high bee therapeutical effect. And actually crucial, it offers bee biomolecules compatible to the identity with the human ones. The standardized honey bee therapeutic products may become and they should become, because they have this unique irreplaceable potential, the support of what is called the biomedicine of the future. If so, the following question naturally arises: how do you explain that the bee products remain outside the interest of the drug manufacturers? The responses could be twofold: 1) either they do not know well enough the biochemistry of the substances offered by the bees, which is somewhat explained by their unmerited absence in the study of the pharmaceutical education; 2) or because the source of substances, perhaps more expensive than the others, increasing the costs, would reduce the profits of the industrialists.

Somewhat within the reach of the apitherapeutists are the food supplements prepared from combinations of the hive products, such as honey propolized in different proportions of percentage of honeys with royal jelly or of the mixtures of the pollen or bee bread with different varieties of honey etc.. Such alimentary supplements may be prescribed in various diseases, although there are drawbacks. The combination of the bee products and possibly of the other non-apiarian ingredients, to be found out in commerce, correspond or not to the therapist's intentions.

Then, some ingredients, with a lower molecular weight than the honey, possibly with a given sterol structure, tend to separation, rising themselves to the surface of the container. This happens, for example, in the case of honeys with royal jelly. In this way, the patient cannot benefit from taking rhythmic and equal doses of royal jelly: the first days the royal jelly which is on the surface of honey will be run out, then the patien will simply eat the honey.

The administration of the honey bee therapeutic products, whatever they may be, requires that the apitherapeutist has medical knowledges by far more diversified than a specialist in one or another of the medical skills. Among his knowledges cannot miss the ones on the molecular and cellular biology, biochemistry, allergology, immunology etc. But, more than that, the apitherapeutist must be familiar with the biochemistry of the honey bee therapeutic products, as well as with the doses of bioactive substances which may be administered according to the commonly known medical criteria.