Rural Missouri - October 2023 - 17

by Sara Schafer | sschafer@ruralmissouri.coop
O
n a cold winter day, Harold Gallaher
knocked 100 honeybees into
a bucket with the sweep of his
arm. He tossed on a lid and rushed
toward his warm house, with the hope of
keeping the cold and unhappy honeybees
alive until they were all inside. Harold eased
off the lid and coaxed out a bee. His goal:
Get stung by a bee or two to relieve his
intense nausea.
In 2010, Harold found out he had a
cancerous tumor on his spine and was
diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He went
through chemotherapy and radiation treatments
for the cancer and faced the common
corresponding nausea and lethargy. While
he was tending his hobby beehives, a bee
stung Harold.
" I went back to the house and told my
wife I was hungry. She said, 'Who are
you? You can't be hungry, you had chemo
today,' " Harold recalls.
That accidental sting pushed Harold
to explore apitherapy, an ancient type of
alternative medicine that uses honeybee
products to relieve various ailments from
arthritis to headaches to inammation. arold
knew the bee sting brought him relief.
He also knew his wife wouldn't continue to
support the bucket of bees in her kitchen.
So, he reached out to a family friend,
Amanda Hutchings.
Amanda has years of specialized education
in compounding medications - custom
medicines for a specific person  and
transdermal medications - skin-applied
medicines. manda understood the benefits
of apitherapy and told Harold if his doctor
would write a prescription, they could
eplore the benefits of bee venom.
 called my oncologist and 'm the first
person in history to get a prescription for a
bee sting, " Harold says. " So, Amanda made
up my prescription with purchased venom.
We didn't know if it would work, so we had
to test it. I took a book and parked outside
the hospital. I applied a bit of the cream
and texted her the time and that I'd started
hapter . y hapter  e ere confident
I wasn't going to have a reaction, and the
cream worked as well as the bee sting. "
Motivated by the results, the pair wondered
if they could harvest their own bee
venom. There was one major snag - a honeybee
has just one sting per lifetime. " The
honeybee is the only stinging insect with
a barbed stinger, " Harold says. " So, if one
stings you, the bee has to pull itself apart to
get away and that kills it. "
A student of his hives, Harold had the
idea to combine a glass plate fine ire
mesh and two AA batteries. " When the
queen lands on the wire mesh, she receives
a mild jolt, " Harold says. " She doesn't
like that and starts stinging. But since
it's a glass plate, her stinger doesn't get
stuck and she can dump her entire load of
venom, " Harold says.
The queen will alert her 20,000 best
friends in the hive, Harold says, to come out
and help. Shortly after the glass is covered
in the fine hite poder of bee venom.
Initially, Amanda says, their goal was
to find a solution for arold. t orked so
Left: Harold's Famous Bee Co. is built around honey merchandise, including its flagship product, Harold's
Famous Bee Cream, which is made from honeybee venom. Above: Company co-owner Amanda Hutchings
inspects one of her educational hives in downtown Ste. Genevieve.
OCTOBER 2023 | RURALMISSOURI.COOP 17

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Rural Missouri - October 2023

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