Propolis???

I am looking for some good information on this bee product, especially in the treatment of eczema.

Good information or MY information?

CynthiaM put me onto the unique qualities of propolis. She even gave me some from her hives.

I have used it in a homebuilt concoction that I use on my horses for all cuts and booboos. When baby horse most recently sliced herself on wire (stupid!) fearing cellulitis, that nasty swelling of the tissues that our horses seem prone to, I globbed on my homemade salve and there was no cellulitis!

I will share my recipe with you and I would try this on your eczema, it can't hurt.

Over LOW HEAT (I can't stress this enough) using a pot you are willing to throw away, melt a glob of CRISCO vegetable shortening. Throw in several handfuls of dried CALENDULA flowers, some dried LAVENDER. Add some propolis and honey. Stir, stir, stir. Towards end of melting/heating add a small splash olive oil and shredded beeswax. Cool a little then pour into jar of your choice. When completely cool, add lid.

The thing is, propolis is a lot like pitch. It STICKS to the bottom of your pot and is very hard to get mixed into the other goo. It may never come out of your pot. All the oatmeal you cook from that day forward will taste like pitch. Propolis is sort of pitchy.

This is a patented, bonded, super duper mine only recipe and cannot be used by anyone wihtout my permission. Sue, I give you my permission. Crisco has amazing preservative qualities, as does honey and I had my last jar of it over a year and it never went funky. I loaned it to a friend when her horse got hurt..I do not know if it was the miracle cure, but I have faith in it.

Sue, masses of information available. I will direct you to a site, you can type in and google this key sentence: value added products of bees anything that will mentioned valued added products from bees, anything like that with value added and bee and products or even propolis. The first one that came up when I googled for you was this [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] . Here you can glean all the information you would like to know about the power of propolis. And by the way, during my beekeeping on the coast, I had collected lots of this product. Lots, serious, lots, I would be willing to ship some your way, watch out very sticky....

I have kept bees for many years, since about 2005, when I took a good many courses on beekeeping and also attended Simon Fraser University to attain a Master Beekeeper certificate. Not that that means a hoot nor a hollar, but I have the degree, smiling. It was a 5 day course and they figured you would be a master beekeeper after you were done. Nope. Was not. Took years to feel like I even had a handle on working with bees. Why do I ramble as I do? I don’t know, but I am compelled and cannot stop. Perhaps a condition of some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder, smiling. Probably, manifests in many ways with me. So I ramble...and I will take you and others down this road, alongside me, just for fun.

I wish I had the time to redirect you to many, many posts I had made on another forum, regarding bees, about all my experiences with the bees, and pictures to go with it, but don’t. Maybe one day, one fine day I can resurrect those posts and bring a few here. Time will tell that tale. Oh well, neither here nor there.

Do you recall the post I made a long time ago about my Grandson’s horrible excema and treatment with honey and cinnamon? Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, I’ll try to get that one here in this thread....the treatment of pure cinnamon (I now think that cinnamon from the cassia bark might work as well, but I like the pure Ceylon type) mixed equal parts with honey, cured the excema that was causing his hands to be cracked and so painful. After the first treatment with the muck, there was noticeable improvement. That honey would have had pieces of propolis suspended in it. When I have my therapeutic honey jar I always place pieces of propolis in it, in small pieces, the molecules from the propolis meld with the honey and are powerful medicine. I use honey all the time in my life, my family’s life and there is a very large bottle in the horse barn for wounds that the horses get. Why do horses always have hurties on their legs. I don’t know, but they seem to always be in need of honey packing. Just before Daughter et al went to the coast for the barrel racing finals, her prize horse had cut the front of his foot quite badly, just above the coronate band. A kind of a v-shaped injury. For three days she washed it with colloidal silver water, packed it with honey, bandaged it and changed that bandage daily. The injury was so healed during those few days, that he went to the coast with her and I am sure that he will be competing his brains out. Hopefully to win her some recognition for the hard work that her and hers have been doing since early spring to qualify to enter.....can’t wait for tomorrow night when I will hear results....blathering on.

I have used propolis and honey for miraculous healing, over and over and over. I could cite memories of things that would make your hair curl, if you don’t already have curly hair, smiling. So many times honey has brought healing from so many lives, be they animal or human and I know that I have instilled trust in so many people too. They reach for honey before any other antibiotic. Sometimes there has been cases when honey was not enough, and the need to resort to an actual antibiotic, but rare. When you read about value added products from bees, you will be amazed at what powers are in such an easy reach, and naturally made.

Propolis is the resins that bees gather from flowers, trees, and such. They gather it and most times it takes two bees to remove the propolis from the bees that are returning with it. Not all the time, but it is so sticky that another bee has to help. Bees use propolis as glue in their home. They use it as preservative for things, like mice, that they might kill, if the intruder is too big to physically move out, the intruder is entombed in propolis and preserved in this way. I once found a slug that had been preserved in propolis in one of my colonies once. Boy was that fun, handing that bag of sticky slug for people to look at. A post was made on that too. I wonder if it was on this site or another chicken forum, can’t remember, should look....bees use propolis to seal cracks and any moveable part of the bee home. The frames are sometimes so stuck, it is difficult for the human to move them, but it can be done. Powerful stuff. The scent of propolis is like taking a walk through a forest on a warm day, it is the most clear and pretty scent, to me, that I can imagine. I keep a jar of propolis on my kitchen counter, and refer many times to that open jar with my nose, to take a walk through that warm forest. It is particularly nice when my imagination runs so freely with this in the wintertime. Bang. I am back in the mid day of summer, back on the coast. Propolis from different regions is very different. Haven’t had a chance to gather any propolis from my new region, and wonder about it. Perhaps next year.

Back on that coast, in our old life, I seemed to have more time for things. No clue why, less human responsibility in our new life here, but just don’t seem to have time as I had. I would spend many, many hours throughout the summer and early fall gathering propolis from my colonies. I had 10 at one point, so lots to work through. Life among the bees, it was beautiful. I had gathered much during those days, of that beautiful product from the bees and have stored it properly, to be there one day, one fine day, when I can make good use of it....lovely. I cannot speak highly enough of this part of what the bees gather, it is good.

I am going to make a new thread to show some pictures for you and others to look at, involving what bee propolis looks like. I thought it might be rude to put some pictures into this thread, as there are a fair number of them and it might be difficult for some people to load the pictures when they want to look at your thread. Hope that fairs well with you.

To use propolis properly, as for tinctures, there are things that must be done with it to make it liquid. It is a mass of stickiness. When it is cold it is hard as a rock. Take a wad of propolis and hold it in your hand, it can be melded to any shape you like, amazing stuff. Propolis is used as an agent in creation of some coatings for violins. It is hard as a rock, and mixed with other stuff, incredible.

As you will study about propolis, you will find the power that is held within this magical product. The bees also add enzymes to it, that is another power, the propolis usually has wax in it, which is where the enzymes come from, bees are full of wonderful enzymes. I hope that I have rambled on enough to peak a good interest in the power of this product. Read and learn...you will be amazed at what you are hearing. Do it, you will never look back. With that, have a most beautiful day, CynthiaM.

For those of you who have never met CynthiaM, she is a little, tiny, vibrating mass of interest and energy and curiosity and life experience! A whole LOT packed into a tiny package.

I have to second everything she said about honey and propolis. When honey saved that poor, gangrenous hen that was suffering through my one and only crop surgery, you could have knocked me over with a feather! From the smell of the hen you'd have thought she'd been dead for three days already! But cleaned the wound, smacked on the honey and SHE LIVED! Either it was the honey or her thinking we were marinating her for the barbecue..whatever, that rotting hen pulled through and I swear it was the honey.

Sue, there is lots to read, I have been to the link Cynthia provided. Fascinating stuff.

Just a hint, tip or suggestion...
When making your goop, salve, incredible healing potion or whatever you wish to think it is, if you melt the beeswax first, then add the propolis to the melted beeswax, then add that to the oils, you will have a more homogeneous product.
A very simple product for everything you would use Vaseline for (but it is petroleum sludge) is home made Unpetroleum Jelly.
To a cup of organic castor oil, heated to feel warm to the touch, add 1 ounce of melted beeswax. Stir to blend and let set.
With that basic recipe, additives of essential oils, herbs and minerals can be added. Lip gloss is easily made with that basic recipe, essential oil (like orange or mint or?) and mica for colour. For eczema, half neem can be substituted for the half of castor, tea tree EO and calendula, maybe horsetail, added. That is aslo excellent for hot spot treatments for dogs and cats. If you add an ounce of zinc oxide to the basic recipe, you have diaper rash creme. There are endless possibilities. Sore muscle rub...camphor, menthol, pepper

Thank you for all this info, Ladies! I was gifted some Propolis yesterday. My eczema has been horrific this month so I thought I might try something different. I will be whipping up a batch or two of cream and I will let you know how it goes.

Fat Ewe, I find many warnings on the Internet about using Propolis if you have a bee allergy. Your post gives me hope as I have so many allergies I suspect bees may also be on the list.

Uno, I will guard your famous secret recipe with my life.

Cynthia, thank you for the extra post with your bees.

And by the way... my hair is VERY curly!