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Cleaning Bee Venom

Bee venom when introduced in its raw form is often full of propolis and pollen and potentially dust and dirt from the bee’s pollen basket. This is from the static generated on the bees legs which allows them to hold large volumes of pollen as well as it attracts dirt and grime.

 This normally is low-grade bee venom as it requires significant processing to get up to standard. One way of improving the quality is through using a kitchen sieve and processing it through smaller and smaller sieves till a medium grade quality is achieved.This ideal for creams and soaps as it reduces any contaminates and allows for a medium grade product. 

To further refine the venom it is best to put the product through a 0.1 micron filter that can further reduce any unwanted bacteria in the product and using distilled water and water evaporation techniques to retrieve the product or use it in a water solution.

  One of the best ways to reduce degradation is to make use of UV-resistant bottles while collecting the venom as UV will destroy the polypeptides within the venom making it degraded and unusable.

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Introduction to Bee Venom Collection – A guide

We’re happy to announce that we’re releasing our first version of our beginner’s guide to collecting bee venom. We’ve had a lot of people ask us questions that you typically can’t find answers to on the web, and we’re going to try to address as many of them as we can in this guide.

It’s very much a work in progress and we hope to keep updating it going into the future, periodically releasing new versions, so we welcome more questions. If a section is unclear to the reader, please ask us for clarification, as well.

Even though the practice of collecting bee venom has been happening across the world for decades, there are very few resources available for gathering information.

While we of course retail our own bee venom collector, people are free to refer to the guide regardless of them using our collectors or not. We want the process of collecting bee venom to become a whole lot more transparent!

The guide can be downloaded through the link below, or the image above.

Introduction to Bee Venom Collection Ver1

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Our Mascot and Importance of Alternative Revenue Streams in Beekeeping.

This guy is our new mascot! Well, not officially.

If you’re already on this page, we probably don’t have to tell you, but this year has been hard for beekeepers. I was recently talking to a  friend who is also a fellow beekeeper and is on the verge of bankruptcy. Commercial pollution has caused colony collapse in a portion of his hives and he has decided to go back to two of the basics in order to preserve his bee numbers – honey and wax production. Currently, in Australia, there are four main ways of making money in the apiary industry: Pollination services, queen breeding/Nuc boxes, honey, and wax. However, with the introduction of foreign pests such as SHB, AFB, WM and others yet to come it’s definitely difficult to keep a traditional beekeeping business afloat – especially considering the amount pesticide and neonicotinoids that affect bees.

Many of us are in the same boat with regards to these problems.  So what might be a solution to this problem? Opening another avenue for income is the logical answer, and capitalising on the recent trend of bee-venom-containing beauty products in East Asia. We believe with quality Australian bee venom, we can compete on an international stage. The research into bee venom, in particular, its Apamin and Melittin, has shown particularly useful compounds which can help with increased learning (I’m sure all beekeepers know this already), Parkinson’s and dementia (which affects 1 in 3 Australians and is the 2nd leading cause of death). I would be happy to talk to anyone about this as I’ve written a paper on the beneficial effects of Apamin.

We don’t have a huge amount of leatherwood or manuka plantations in Queensland for that needed boost. But we have a lot of smart individual and technological advancements. We want to be the leaders of this new industry and we are open to questions from any beekeeper who would want instructions on where to begin and how to get started.

We want everybody to benefit from this new wave.

I would be happy for anyone to email me with questions or how to get involved in this new Industry.

Let’s all win together.
My email is James@whalelabs.com.au

 

Avid Beekeeper & Managing Director
James