Our potential customers of dried bee venom are sending us a lot of questions.
I will now list most of the not answered questions up today:
1. How safe are bees when harvesting bee venom?
Bees are absolutely safe; we are cooperating with beekeepers having very big experience in safe harvesting bee venom. They know how many times, at what time and weather, and what level of electricity to use while collecting bee venom. Big experience and special knowledge is necessary in order to collect bee venom and not causing harm to bees. Bees’ health is the most important for us, as only healthy bees can grant us strong, high activity of bee venom powder.
2. How much bee venom can be collected from one hive?
It depends on several circumstances: collectors, how strong and healthy bees are, how many bees are there in the hive and when one is harvesting bee venom. On average, beekeepers take 0.3-0.7 grams of bee venom powder from each hive.
3. Can anyone use bee venom powder for producing any cosmetic or apitherapy product?
No. It is highly advised that if a person is not a professional pharmacist, cosmetologist, apitherapy doctor or researcher, it is not recommended to use bee venom in any purpose. It is because, if somebody has allergy on bee venom, it may suffocate just in moment after opening up the roof of the bottle. One must be professional to use this substance.
4. Does the color of bee venom define the quality of bee venom?
Yes and no. Color is not a measure of quality. Color maybe pale gray, human skin color, light yellow and brownish. It depends on the technique of harvesting, time of harvesting and race of bees. However, if bee venom is 5 or more years old, it becomes dark brown, because of the damaged cells of proteins and enzymes.
5. Which one of bee venom components is more stable?
We, Bee venom Lab LLC have conducted very serious experiments and we already have of many years’ experience of testing and experimenting on stability of three bee venom components (melittin, phospholipase A2 and Apamin) in requests of our customers from pharmaceutical companies, and the result was as follow: Phospholipase A2 is the most stable. Shelf life of this component is 8 years at 0°C! Shelf life of Apamin is 5 years and most of the sensitive in time and not stable component of bee venom is melittin. Percent amount of bee venom is becoming less every year stored at any temperature. It does not matter at how low temperature it is stored, melittin is very sensitive to time.
6. What are CAS number of bee venom and each of its components?
One of our customer pharmaceutical company wanted to know about it and we worked hard on it, to find out almost all up today discovered components of bee venom. We have found CAS numbers of each component and here are our final results of our hard work:
CAS NUMBER OF THE COMPONENTS OF BEE VENOM
| Component | CAS number | % |
| Melittin | 20449-79-0 | 40-75 |
| Apamin | 24345-16-2 | 2-3 |
| MCD-Peptide (Peptide401) | 32908-73-9 | 2-3 |
| Adolapin | 79029-92-8 | 1.0 |
| Protease Inhibitor | 66701-25-5 | <0.8 |
| Tertiapin | 910044-56-3 | 0.1 |
| Melittin F | 37231-28-0 | 0.01 |
| Procamine A, B | 51943-80-7 | 1.4 |
| Cardiopep | 54511-11-4 | <0.7 |
| Hyaluronidase | 9001-54-1 | 1.5-2.0 |
| Phospholiase A2 | 9001-84-7 | 10-12 |
| Histamine | 56-92-8 | 0.6-1.6 |
| Norepinephrine | 51-41-2 | 0.1 -0.7 |
| 6 Phospholipids | 123465-35-0 | 4-5 |
| γ-Aminobutyric | 56-12-2 | <0.5 |
| Secarpin | 58694-50-1 | <0.1 |
| Minerals: | ||
| Phosphorus | 7723-14-0 | 3.1 |
| Magnesium | 7439-95-4 | <0.1 |
| Calcium | 7440-70-2 | <0.1 |
| Copper | 7440-50-8 | <0.1 |
7. Does the quality of bee venom depend on the content of Melittin?
Basically, yes. As far as melittin is the main component of bee venom, we can confirm that as much melittin bee venom contains, as high quality it is. However, it depends on what bee venom is used for. Not always is bee venom requested with a high composition of melittin. Sometimes, customer pharmaceutical companies are interested in phospholipase A2 and not interested in melittin at all.
8. Is it difficult to trust all provided certificates of bee venom?
Unfortunately, yes. Very often we read written”70% “and more percent across the melittin in the provided bee venom certificates. It is not true in most cases. I believe about 95 percent of beekeepers have a huge problem of testing bee venom they are harvesting. It is not surprising, because it is a real problem. Before testing bee venom it is highly necessary to clean it carefully in the special equipment, which is long lasting and hard work. After cleaning, it is necessary to dry it in the exsiccator at the appropriate humidity. Only after bee venom powder is absolutely cleaned from various contaminates, laboratory and HPLC testing starts.
They have difficulties in finding the right laboratory with experience and standard of laboratory and HPLC (chromatography) testing. In order to test bee venom, it is necessary to have a lot of reagents for testing some very precious bee venom components, such as melittin, phospholipaseA2, Apamin and other components of bee venom which should be a subject of testing. It is all because to determine the percentage amount and activity level of each components of bee venom. Each of these reagents and components of bee venom are very expensive and it is enough for only 2 or 3 tests. For example, the price of 1 mg. melittin of 95 percent purity is not less than 350 $. It is the same with other components of bee venom. It depends on how many components of bee venom you want to test. Besides, to achieve a 100 % accuracy of testing it is necessary to possess right standard, high professional qualification and high technology laboratory equipment.
All above mentioned obstacles tell us how difficult it is to trust the certificate they provide to their customers. When the beekeeper offers about 500 grams of bee venom, it consists of bee venom batches collected from several different hives in different times. After they incorporate all these batches without laboratory testing. Having no laboratory makes it difficult to incorporate the batches of homogeneous parameters. That’s why it is necessary for laboratories to share experience and standard method of testing bee venom to overcome the difficulties that arise while providing the real test results. Thus, the beekeepers who need to have real certificate of the bee venom they are harvesting must pay for all the reagents and standards necessary for HPLC test of their bee venom powder.
We are always ready to share our experience and method of laboratory and HPLC testing to the laboratories interested in testing and certificating bee venom powder.
9. Can lyophilized (freeze dried) bee venom be considered as a Grade I of bee venom?
No. Lyophilized Bee Venom prepared from Grade III or Grade IV bee venom. The contaminated venom will be diluted, filtered and finally freeze-dried. Some of the active ingredients of the venom are also affected or removed by the purification method, because the preparation process washes up fully or partially a lot of precious components. Thus, this preparation process may lessen the therapeutic value of the venom.
10. What is the future of bee venom in the fight against Covid-19?
Very exciting news spread in the World News that bee venom kills Covid-19. It has been reported that none of the people who were treated with apitherapy and systematically injected with bee venom solution became ill with Covid-19. Their number is quite large and therefore a credible and strong basis to start a serious scientific study to scientifically prove this amazing fact. However, until this fact is scientifically proven, apitherapeutic treatment should be given only to people who need it for the treatment of another disease and not for prophylaxis. Let’s wait for what the scientists will say.