Apitherapy (bee venom therapy) has been used since ancient times. Ancient writers as diverse as Hesiod (800 BC), Aristophanes (450-388 BC), Varro (166-27 BC) and Columella (1st century AD) all wrote on the cultivation of the hive. Hippocrates (460-377 BC), the Father of Medicine, used it and call it Arcanum - a very mysterious remedy. Galan (131-201 AD), the Father of Experimental Physiology, mentioned it in his 500 treatises on medicine. Charlemagne (742-814 AD) is said to have had himself treated with bee stings. The Koran (XVI:71) refers to bee venom in the following terms: "There proceeded from their bellies a liquor wherein is a medicine for men." For apitherapy and the scientific understanding of bees, real progress began about 100 years ago when physician Phillip Terc of Austria advocated the deliberate use of bee stings in his work: Report about a Peculiar Connection Between the Beestings and Rheumatism. Today&＃39;s proponents of apitherapy cite the benefits of bee venom for alleviating chronic pain and for treating many ailments including various rheumatic diseases involving inflammation and degeneration of connective tissue (e.g., several types of arthritis), neurological disease (migraine, peripheral neuritis, chronic low back pain), autoimmune disease (multiple sclerosis, lupus) and dermatological conditions (eczema, psoriasis, herpes virus infections). In contrast, interest in bees has been sporadic in conventional medicine, focusing mainly on two areas unrelated to the therapeutic uses proposed above. These areas are: (i) the danger of hypersensitivity reactions, including anaphylactic shock, from the sting of insects of the genus Apis; (ii) the use of bee venom itself as immunotherapy for allergic reaction to such stings, especially to prevent life-threatening anaphylactic reactions in adults.