We are looking forward to seeing you in Ljubljana in September!
This forum provides us with a great opportuity to bring together some of our editors and our subscribers in a fabulous location.
The organisers promise a packed program and have brought together a number of world famous experts to present the
scientific programme.
For more information about the speakers and program visit: http://www.apimedica.org/
Letter of Introduction by Franc Šivic
Third International Apitherapy Forum
Slovenia
28, 29 and 30th September 2010
Dr. Filip Terč (1844 -1917), a doctor and beekeeper from Maribor (Slovenia) who successfully cured 543 out of his 658 of patients suffering from rheumatic diseases, is considered the father of the modern apitherapy? For several years, his birthday, 30 March, has been celebrated as World Apitherapy Day.
This is one of the reasons why Slovenia decided to organise the international forum with the them ‘Keeping Healthy through Bees'. This forum, which will bring together the greatest experts from the field of apitherapy and those skilled in techniques of obtaining healthy bee products. These experts will present their latest research. The event will be accompanied by the API-EXPO international beekeeping exhibition offering various workshops and popular lectures dealing with a variety of topics. This will be a true beekeeping festival aimed at bringing the bees and their general benefits for mankind closer to all generations, young and old.
In the second half of the previous century, the Medex company from Ljubljana, specialising in bee products, organised three highly noted international symposia on apitherapy, meaning Slovenian beekeepers have quite a tradition in this field. The Apimondia 2003 congress was another wonderful experience, as many participants from all parts of the world still remember. It was a congress with soul. We hope to again give soul to this year's Apimedica and Apiquality forum.
As in other developed countries, official medical science in Slovenia looks upon apitherapy with distrust and keeps its distance. The greatest reproach that some doctors make is that healing substances in bee products are not standardised and they change from year to year and from one place to the other. This is very true. Each Aspirin Plus C tablet contains exactly 400 mg of acetylsalicylic acid and 240 mg of ascorbic acid or vitamin C, regardless of whether it was manufactured in Germany or anywhere else, this year or five years from now. Fresh willow pollen contains both of these active ingredients and current observations show that it has more beneficial effects for people than Aspirin, but each year, the quantity of these two important components differs. And this is why such pollen cannot be recognised as a drug.
It is interesting that medical science recognises the immen
se power in pollen and bee venom. The first can confine a person with allergies to bed and incapacitate him for weeks. A single bee sting can kill every two hundredth resident of Slovenia who is allergic. Yet beekeepers know that both pollen and other bee products can help prevent or even treat various diseases. Most doctors do not see this, do not know it or refuse to learn about it. Perhaps they will change their minds if we manage to bring them as listeners to this year's forum. This is why we have invited the best experts to hold lectures, as they will present strong scientific evidence of the usefulness of bees for our health.
In defence of official medical science, however, it needs to be said that certain improvements are evident: an increasing number of doctors have been successfully using honey to treat wounds.
With our ‘Keeping Healthy Through Bees' slogan, we wish to express that it is not only bee products that maintain and improve our health, but bees themselves are important. Beekeeping groups have been operating in Slovenian schools for decades, allowing children to come together once a week and learn about the life of the bees, and to participate in working with the school beehives. With time, many of them become good beekeepers and members of our organisation. Such an ealy introduction to bees has been seen to have many therapeutic effects amongst troubled young people.
Slovenian beekeepers invite the readers of Journal of ApiProduct and ApiMedical Science to come to Slovenia at the end of September and experience our beekeeping festival in a friendly atmosphere.
More about the Apimedica and Apiquality forum is available online at www.go-mice.eu
Franc Šivic
Vice-President
Slovenian Beekeepers' Association
