Bees base for planned natural healing centre

Press, 13 May 1987, Page 15

Bees base for planned natural healing centre

By Irena Czekierska of Reuters through NZPA Kamianna, Poland A mountainside village in southern Poland, fringed by forests where bears still roam and eagles nest in summer, could soon become the world’s first apitherapy centre, using natural remedies based on bees.

It is just one of the schemes of Father Henryk Ostach, who came to Kamianna more than 20 years ago and transformed the near-deserted hamlet into a thriving community modelled on the beehives which are his passion. “There is so much we can learn from the way bees organise their lives,” Ostach said. “They are a model family — diligent, efficient, they love order, have great respect for their queen and are prepared to defend her even until death.”

On a grassy slope behind . a picturesque wooden church Ostach has collected hives from all over Poland, many of them old, intricately carved and brightly painted in folkloric forms

of animals, cottages, windmills and peasant figures. They are still working, and several thousand visitors come here each year to buy the local honey, which is delicately flavoured with lime tree blossoms, and said to be the best produced in Poland.

“Bees are much loved in Poland and the tradition goes back a long way,” Ostach told Reuters in a recent interview. Sitting in his parish study, surrounded by natural history books in several languages, he said beekeepers here even have a patron saint, Ambrosius.

In the ancient •chronicles of the amber merchants who plied the routes from the Baltic shares to Rome, Poland was described as “a land flowing with honey, full of fresh air and beautiful forests,” , he said. Now, while vast tracts of the country are poisoned by industrial pollution, Kamianna is one of the last unspoiled areas with forests unharmed by acid rain and mountain springs still crystal clear. The healing properties of honey and other substances produced by bees,

together with the clear local air, could be the answer to all sorts of illnesses including respiratory complaints, eye problems and skin diseases, Ostach believes. “Bees are the great hope of sick people,” he said, producing a tome of evidence compiled by the recent fifth world symposium on apitherapy, and adding that people were increasingly turning towards natural remedies instead of modern chemical drugs. In apitherapy, bee products including honey, wax and a sterile substance called propolis, which bees make to protect their hive, are used as ointment or processed in pill or liquid form. Propolis, as an ointment, is already catching on as a popular remedy which some Poles swear speeds up the healing process of skin wounds. Ostach said it was used with considerable success in treating burns victims of the chemical plant disaster at Bhopal in India two years ago. He hopes to set up the world’s first apitherapy sanatorium with facilities

to treat up to 10,000 patients from around the world. He said he. was setting up an international foundation to fund the project. Building work would start next year with a scheduled completion date of 1995.

If that sounds fanciful, it should be remembered that when the priest, now aged 62, first arrived in Kamianna, only a handful of dilapidated houses stood there and, he said, he slept on the ground with only a raincoat for a blanket Now there is a road which he helped build, the houses have running water and electricity, gas is on the way, and a retirement home for priests is almost finished. He took up his hobby 35 years ago when he found his pastoral duties in his first parish included tending a flock of bees, and he has become such an authority on the subject that he now heads the Polish beekeepers* association. One of his most interesting observations was reported in the Polish press earlier this year. While the rest of the country knew nothing of

**• ’ J what had happened for several days after the nuclear, disaster at Chernobyl . last spring, Boatach’s bees headed straight back to their hives and stayed there for eight days. “We couldn't understand why. It was a beautiful, sunny day and there were lots of fresh blossoms out,” Ostach said. Many of Poland’s 200,000 beekeepers reported similar stories and it was only later that they realised the bees had sensed radioactivity passing over the country from the neighbouring Soviet Union. “Bees are a natural gelger-counter,” the priest said. As head of the beekeepers’ association, Ostach is now preparing for an international apiarists* congress in Warsaw in July, to be attended by 5000 enthusiasts from more than 70 nations, including Israel and South Africa, with which Poland has either limited or no diplomatic ties. “He is indefatigable,” said Father Michal Grabowski. »