Origins and development of apitherapy and apitourism

Abstract

Unlike classic types of health tourism, such as exploiting water and climate, apitourism is only in the initial stages of development. On the global scale, Slovenia is one of the leading countries in the development of this type of tourism, as the first steps in apitourism were taken there. A Slovenian, Anton Janša, was one of the leading beekeeping experts in the 18^th century, while Filip Terč is considered to be one of the founders of apitherapy as a branch of alternative medicine. The (historical) development of both is essential for the development of modern apitourism; a presentation of their specific development path in Slovenia is the main purpose of the paper. We found that there is a clear cause and effect relationship among the following concepts: beekeeping – apitherapy – apitourism. In this paper we analysed the link through a temporal and substantive aspect and found that the development brought about improvements to bee products and related services (apitherapy) in order to generate revenue (commercialisation); the benefits to the health of individuals and therefore the society (public health) should be pointed out as well.

Keywords:

• beekeeping
• apitherapy
• apitourism
• health tourism
• health
• history
• Slovenia

Disclosure statement

The author reports no potential conflicts.

Notes

1 We can also categorise it under integrative or complementary medicine. The terminological aspects are explained in Mićić and Mićić (2009) and Ng et al. (Ng et al., 2016) but are not the subject of this discussion. This article will use the term alternative medicine throughout.

2 It can be discussed from the perspective of history end ethnography as well.

3 Due to a rich Slovenian beekeeping history and culture, United Nations proclaimed 20^th May ‘World Bee Day’ at the behest of Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association with the support of the Slovenian government.

4 A more comprehensive history of beekeeping is presented in Crane (1999).

5 More can be found in Franić (2019).

6 For easier presentation we use regional names that are part of the general knowledge that do not completely correspond to the administrative units of the past.

7 Honey has been used as a wound treatment already by the ancient civilisations around the world (Forrest, 1982; Minden-Birkenmaier & Bowlin, 2018).

8 Interesting topics were discussed at world congresses of Apimondia, e.g. 44^th Apimondia Congress, Daejon, 15-20 September 2015 and 46^th Apimondia Congress, Montreal, 8 – 12 September 2019 (Congress 2015—Daejon—South Korea—Proceedings, 2015).

9 More on historical perspective can be found in Kuropatnicki et al. (2018).

10 Samarghandian et al. (2017) made the review to emphasize the ability of honey and its multitude in medicinal aspects.

11 In the context of comprehensive coverage of alternative approaches and solutions, the author also mentions witches and witch doctors.

12 For this reason, ethnological and anthropological research is also relevant.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.