September 7, 2023

From podcast: https://bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/carly-kremer-beekeeper-podcast/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:01:34] Who is Carly Kremer?

[00:03:36] How did Carly start beekeeping?

[00:07:23] How does Carly's company get clean products?

[00:10:30] The use of propolis as antibiotics

[00:12:29] How is propolis harvested?

[00:14:30] The impact of bee products on fertility

[00:18:20] What is royal jelly?

[00:21:11] Bee allergy and bee venom therapy

[00:28:45] The benefits of pollen and royal jelly

[00:40:05] The use of honey in cooking

[00:45:02] The effects of buckwheat honey

[00:47:46] Should pollen and royal jelly be refrigerated?

[00:51:49] Closing the Podcast

[00:53:26] End of Podcast

[00:53:58] Legal Disclaimer

Ben:  My name is Ben Greenfield. And, on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

Carly:  Royal jelly also has a lot of amazing effects on the brain. So, royal jelly is a super powerful nootropic. It contains these two fatty acids that are only naturally occurring in royal jelly. One's called 10-HDA. The other is called AMP N1-oxide. And, they basically promote brain-derived nootropic factors. So, royal jelly is it's used often for hormonal balance. It's used for longevity, but you see royal jelly being used very frequently in western medicine for concussion for athletes, anyone who's had brain injury.

Ben:  Really?

Carly:  Oh, yeah, big time, big time. Royal jelly is incredible for the brain. It's also one of the only naturally occurring sources of acetylcholine. So, really cool for brain health. And, there was a study, I think it came out of University of Warsaw and it was looking at how royal jelly actually improves your spatial reasoning. And so, I use royal jelly kind of as a productivity hack as well. So, I'll use it before I record with you or if I'm doing a ton of product research, and it really helps with focus, memory, concentration.

Ben:  Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

Alright, folks, I actually had my morning smoothie about, gosh, 45 minutes ago. And, I did, yes, have liver in my smoothie and coconut milk and protein powder and all the usuals, but I top almost every single smoothie I have every morning with bee pollen. As a matter of fact, tonight, I'm also going to have this wonderful Ora King salmon that I have up in the refrigerator right now, and that is going to get smeared with salt and dill and honey. And, I'm constantly using bee products. I've learned a lot about bee products from what I've read in today's guest website and also from the products that she creates. 

Her name is Carly Kremer. She has this company called Beekeepers Naturals. I've been like an addict on all their products since I think 2017, which is close to when they started. And, I believe I discovered, you guys, Carly. I think it was at Paleo f(x). I'm pretty sure. You guys were presenters there. Remember Paleo f(x) back in Austin?

Carly:  It was.

Ben:   Yeah.

Carly:  Yeah, I had my little cardboard sign.

Ben:  Yeah, like bee superfood honey with propolis and royal jelly and all the stuff that you don't find in the usual honey. And, I didn't really know any difference between you guys and little plastic Teddy Bear full of honey that you get at the grocery store. But, since that time, I've learned a lot and me and my family use your guys' stuff nearly every day. I mean, down to the point where I'm squirting your nasal spray and spraying your throat spray in my mouth when I'm on airplanes. And so, I just am fascinated with this whole idea of harvesting really healthy stuff from bees while taking good care of bees in the planet. And, I think you guys have cracked the code on that. So, I want to talk all things bees if you're game unless you're sick of talking about bees.

Carly:  Absolutely. Never, my favorite subject always.

Ben:  Okay, good. I'm glad to hear it because I'm going to ask you a lot of questions about bees.

How did you get started in all this?

Carly:  So, I started beekeeping when I was in college and it really started out of necessity. I have an autoimmune condition. I was always sick, nothing worked and I was abroad in Europe. I did a semester abroad. I had very severe tonsillitis where I was having trouble breathing the whole thing because I can't take antibiotics, getting sick with something like that's a little more complicated for me. This pharmacist in Florence in Italy gave me propolis and I started using it. I had no idea what it was. Most of us only know honey, at least at that time, we're not as familiar with propolis. And, I made a full recovery in five days. So, propolis basically functioned in my body the way antibiotics do for most people. First time in 21 years that something just worked for me.

So, after that experience, I started beekeeping not thinking about starting a company just to help myself stay well. I was in college and I was a TA for my chemistry class at the time, so I just had time and access to a lab and all this stuff. And so, I basically started engineering a product line before I knew what I was doing and just kind of fell madly in love with the benefits, the bees, and feel really strongly about sharing the unbelievable nutritious superfoods that come from the hive.

Ben:  So, you got into beekeeping. Was the beekeeping gig just so you could get a bunch of free propolis or something?

Carly:  It was literally. So, when I came back to North America, I could find a lot of honey, a lot of manuka honey, but I was having a really hard time finding propolis. And, I finally found it in this farmer's market and I am super sensitive like trace amounts of pesticides will really affect me. And so, I found this propolis at a farmer's market, it was certified organic, all the things. I took at night a really severe allergic reaction, and so I ran a toxicity panel on the product and I realized there were trace amounts of pesticides. And, it's really murky with bee products if you think about it even if they're certified organic. So, just think about this, you put a hive on certified organic land, these aren't cattle, they're not going to stay put, they'll fly. And, the max foraging distance is the forage for a 5-mile radius. So, that's pretty far. So, if the neighbors are doing something dirty, it can get into the end product and even if it's certified organic, it's not necessarily clean and pesticide-free.

And so, after I did a bunch of research pretty much out of necessity on bee products and how they're classified, I was like, “Okay, great, I have two options, I moved to Europe and get bee products there where they've banned certain pesticides that are not banned in North America or I start beekeeping myself, run quality control, do it that way and that was what I did.

Ben:  So, when you started beekeeping, you were working for somebody else, you just buy all your own bees, right?

Carly:  No. So, I became an apprentice. And, at that time, I was a student that's kind of how I was doing it. And then, after college, I really wanted to start this free product company, but I had a lot of debt. And, I went into finance and I was doing that for a few years. I started in a biotech research, so that kind of had my scientific slant and then I ended up a trader at Goldman Sachs. And, I left that end of 2016 to build my company and haven't really looked back. So, that's kind of how it happened, but I was apprenticing as a beekeeper. And then, even when I was working at Goldman, I mean I was an analyst and working crazy hours so I didn't have capacity. But, the beekeeping operation that I had apprenticed for, I would harvest products from them and then do extractions and basically create products in my studio apartment and then sell them at farmers' markets.

Ben:  Okay, got it. Yeah. I'm thinking about this idea of the pesticides and herbicides and the bee products because I don't fully understand how you get around that. I mean, I'm working on a farm in Idaho right now that I'm building and I'm having to get a memorandum of understanding from the neighbors to plant all these cover crops on the boundary to be able to do soil remediation on the potential of runoff into my well and onto my property from glyphosate and herbicides and pesticides that are up above me. And, I can only imagine if you're trying to manage thousands of bees without any clue where they're going that there's got to be some kind of a way that you can do it, but how do you actually tackle that?

Carly:  Yeah. So, Ben, it's really hard and what we have set up is one of the things that I am the most proud of with this company because we've been able to set up a sustainable regenerative supply chain. So, as this company grows, sustainable beekeeping grows with it. And so, we now have a network of sustainable beekeepers working internationally supporting this company and then we've been able to find this kind of smaller scale hippie-dippy, if you will, sustainable beekeepers and really scale their operation.

So, here's how it works. All of our operations take place in the United States. Very little product comes from the U.S. where working in geography is that our very remote middle of nowhere and we're working in geographies that for the most part have different pesticide regulations than we have in North America. So, a lot of our pollen right now is coming from Spain and we do quite a bit of work in Brazil, we do some work in Canada where we're looking at Ukraine right now as a beekeeping operation out there as potential partners. And, how it works, every time we bring on a new partner, we do a full audit. So, we're looking at everything from their beekeeping practices to pesticide exposure. We basically make sure they're in either a remote enough area or an area that has–remote and has a ton of foliage and mixed wildlife or they're in a geography where there is pesticide regulation and a ban on neonicotinoids.

And then, what we do for all of our products is we third-party pesticide tests. So, it comes back to North America. We have a lab in North America we work with. We test for every pesticide toxin and pollutant in accordance with Health Canada, which is actually even more rigorous. And then, we make our products. So, it's quite the operation, but it's been really cool because we can continue making products at scale that we totally stand behind that people like me can take. And, we get to support people who are creating a healthier system for bees.

Ben:  Yeah. I guess it's pretty unlikely some bee in Spain is going to wind up on a farm in Iowa because that's a long ways to go. So, that makes sense.

Carly:  Then, we have the third-party pesticide test to safeguard it. So, if something were to come back in a way that wasn't in line with our values, we wouldn't use that product and we create contracts around that.

Ben:  Okay, cool. Okay. So now, I understand it's not even coming from the States, you guys just based out of the States. That makes a lot better sense.

Now, this propolis, that's very interesting that you said that about how you were able to use it as an antibiotic. Can you explain how that actually works?

Carly:  Yeah. So, propolis is a really interesting substance. A lot of people don't know what it is. It's basically the substance the bees use to line their hive and keep it germ-free. You can think of it as the immune system of the hive. Without it, the bees would literally die. It comes from plant and tree resins, so the bees will collect plant and tree resins. Think of sap, it's the protective properties and the immune properties of the plant itself, being combined with bee resins and bee secretion. So, a really powerful substance, it's been used for thousands of years. It was kind of used before the advent of antibiotics. In the Borawar, they used it to dress wounds. The Assyrians would drink it to reduce fever. In the 17th century in the London Pharmacopedia, it was listed as an official drug. 

And so, propolis for humans, it's anti-inflammatory, it's anti-fungal, it's anti-microbial, it's antibacterial. So, it's just a really powerful substance to support overall immune health. I use it every single day just for immune health, but really high in antioxidants. A lot of really interesting benefits for gut health as well, something that's kind of cool about propolis that I feel a lot of people don't realize is it contains something called cape, which is a polyphenol that has antimicrobial effects so it can kill the bad bacteria but it actually supports the good bacteria in your gut. So, propolis is a very unique substance that's able to get in there, kill the bad stuff but help the good stuff flourish. So, in terms of how it affects the microbiome, super unique.

Ben:  Almost like a selective antibiotic. That's really interesting. I've heard something similar about oil of oregano, how it won't really nuke the natural biome in the body but it can have some really good antibacterial action.

Now, the propolis, how do you actually get it out of the hive? How do you harvest this? Is it a liquid or a solid? How's it actually done?

Carly:  It's this sticky amber-colored substance. And we, like everything, have our own method of harvesting. So, a lot of people, they'll typically scrape it off the hive walls, which isn't necessarily bad. The bees are producing tons of propolis at all times, but it's a little invasive, it's just like you're getting into the bee's living room and space and sticking tools in there. So, what we do and my first mentor was a third-generation beekeeper from Romania who was also a retired biochemist. He had so many innovative ways, so I didn't come up with this, I learned this from him, but what we do is we take a mess sheet and we put it in the top of the hive. And, when the bees see these holes, they're like, “Oh, my gosh, a hole, germs can get in, let's seal it up with propolis.” So, they seal it up with propolis and then we take the mesh out, pop the propolis out, and that's what we harvest. And, that way, the hive has more than enough propolis for itself and we're not getting in there and scraping around so the bees can have their healthy natural habitat.

Ben:  And then, once you have your propolis, do you just kind of stir that back into the honey?

Carly:  So, we have a honey product that has propolis in it, and that one we do, it's called our Superfood Honey. So, that was one propolis royal jelly–

Ben:  I know. It's my favorite honey. I like the top when you open the lid and it's got all the stuff on the top of it like the dark yellow substance. I have to admit, I selfishly enough like to be the first person to open the jar of the Superfood Honey because I get all these goodies at the top.

Carly:  I get it. I'm the same way. And, not to take us on a crazy tangent here, but Ben, that honey got my husband and I pregnant. I swear by this.

Ben:  How do you tell?

Carly:  Okay. So, first of all–

Ben:  We're going to come with a new sex loop honey product. Is that what we're talking about or something different?

Carly:  A little different, a little different.

Ben:   Okay.

Carly:  We're looking at the fertility stuff. So really interesting story and it is backed up by science, and I'll give you that in a sec. So, my kryptonite, I'm a pretty healthy person but I have a real sugar addiction. I'm one of these people that eats the healthy sweets and the gluten-free cookies, but I'll eat a row of Oreos. It's really, really bad. And so, that came to a head and I did a gut map and I had really bad candida. And so, I went on a hard candida cut and I cut out most sugar. I still had some. And, a lot of our products, by the way, are ketogenic. So, our propolis has zero sugar in it, our bee pollen. Bee pollen is really low sugar, and so a lot of people who are in ketosis anyways take those products, but I went really hardcore and I typically take our B.Powered, our Superfood Honey every day. And, it's called Superfood Honey, that's its old name. I typically take that every day. So, I stopped taking it for a while. I stopped taking it and this is right at the time my husband and I are trying to get pregnant. Nothing's happening.

I finally reintroduced the honey and I got pregnant pretty much right away. I reintroduced the honey for three weeks, my ovulation window hit. I had a work trip, so we weren't even peak ovulation days, we were day five. It was one time I left the next day for a business trip, I was pregnant. And so, that was just my experience. But then, looking at the science, royal jelly has hormone-balancing effects. And, studies in rats, have multiple studies in rats, have shown that it improves follicle growth and ovaries. And then, there's also been animal studies in men showing that royal–male animals not men, in male animals showing that royal jelly can improve sperm motility and quality. So, really interesting situation there.

And then, there was a recent study. This isn't related to fertility, but I want to mention it because I think this is such an important thing that science does not spend enough time looking at. Postmenopausal women, menopause, I have not reached that point yet, but we have a lot of customers who inform us on all of their health situations. And, menopause, it sounds like it can be pretty intense. And, I came across a really interesting study looking at 200 women and they basically gave half the group a thousand milligrams of royal jelly every day and then the other half is a placebo. And, they looked at 11 or more measures of menopause [00:17:03] _____. So, everything from brain fog to night sweats, to depression and hot flashes, to sleep disorders. And, the group that was taking a thousand milligrams of royal jelly every day had almost complete symptom resolution in eight weeks.

Ben:  Oh, wow. That's amazing. You're going to keep a lot of adult male animals sane with this advice. This is very interesting.

Carly:  I mean, this is so important because people don't talk about post-menopause. But anyways, I am pregnant and I'm taking the royal jelly and feeling great about it. So yeah, I had that experience.

Ben:  Congratulations, you're going to have a baby who I'm sure is going to absolutely love honey. But, the royal jelly is different than the other stuff you're talking about, the propolis, right?

Carly: Yeah. So, we're working with all of the different sort of more nuanced medicinal-grade substances that come from the hive. So, we work with honey of course, but we're going beyond honey. We're working with propolis, royal jelly, pollen. Anything that comes from the beehive is our specialty. So, we work a lot with those three and then we'll make different products and add different science-based natural ingredients as we go to kind of perfect our formulas.

Ben:  Now, what is the royal jelly?

Carly:  So, royal jelly, you can kind of think of it as the colostrum of the hive. So, royal jelly, it's a secretion from the nurse bees. And, for newborn baby bees for the first three to five days of development, they're fed royal jelly, so it's like breastfeeding essentially. And then, something that's really cool in the hive. So, after three to five days of their royal jelly diet, these bees transition off onto a more normal bee diet of honey and pollen. And, the only bee who stays on her exclusive royal jelly diet is the queen bee. And, regular bees don't have reproductive organs, the queen bee very much has reproductive organs and lays over a thousand babies a day. So, royal jelly in the hive is creating huge biological differences as well. And then, seeing these early animal findings is really cool.

Ben:  You guys sent me these capsules, and I think they have propolis in them, it's like this immune capsule but it's for gut support as well. I've been popping them before a meal, but if the royal jelly is kind of the bees' version of the colostrum, a lot of people use colostrum for leaky gut or permeable gut lining. Is that why you include it in this digestive or immune support product, these little capsules that you have?

Carly:  So, that product, that one does not have royal jelly in it, that one has propolis though. So, royal jelly totally has gut-supporting effects, but propolis, when looking at humans, has the most research in terms of how it supports the microbiome. So, we know propolis is incredible for immune health. So many studies there. A study just came out of Sonora University, it's looking at antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and it found that propolis was effective. So now, they're looking at propolis could be effective against MRSA, which is really cool. So, propolis is an immune system superhero, but it has really powerful effects on the gut. So, that's why we created this complete gut health formula that has a spore-based probiotic. It has a postbiotic. We put tributyrate in there. Postbiotics, I think, are so important, then people are kind of just learning about them. And then, propolis, because propolis has the cape in there, so that's that polyphenol I mentioned that is really amazing at killing the bad stuff and helping the good bacteria flourish. So, that's just a really important thing.

And then, really cool study has found that propolis has the ability to improve tight junctions, which is the glue between our intestinal cells. So, when those aren't intact, that's when we can get leaky gut or inflamed gut. And, propolis has been shown to actually help heal leaky gut. So, propolis is really effective for supporting gut health and then it's also a prebiotic. So, that's why our gut health formula, we've got the prebiotic, the probiotic, and the postbiotic. So, we've got all three there to kind of create the perfect combo. And then, the cape and propolis helps support the probiotics effect.

Ben:  Yeah. Now, based on this idea of, I guess, maybe like supports like or micro-dosing with something someone's allergic to to eventually wean them off of that allergy, do you think there's something to this idea of using, I guess, honey or maybe you would know better propolis or something like that if you have an allergy, if you have a kid with the with a bee allergy? And, one reason I ask is I got stung, it wasn't a bee, it was a wasp last week when I was taking part in a scavenger hunt out in the streets up in far North Washington. I had nothing on me, but back at my house or the house I was staying at, I had your bee propolis supplement and I took a massive amount of that theorizing it might help. I don't know if it did, but that was my theory. I thought, “Gosh, I should ask Carly about this if any of these products could actually help make you less allergic to bees or if you got stung, whether applied topically or taken orally could help with something that.

Carly:  So, bee products, so bee venom, that getting stung or wasp venom, bee products won't necessarily help with that specific allergy, but propolis does reduce the histamine response. So, anything that you have a histamine response to, propolis is going to help your body to kind of defend against that. And then, this is kind of interesting with bee pollen. And look, I think micro-dosing with an allergen is case by case. Allergies are so case-specific. So, for some people, micro-dosing with an allergen would be way too intense, but for some people, it's great. But anyways, there's this really interesting study and it was basically looking at pollen and how it protects mast cells when histamine is released. And basically, what happened in this study and it was an animal study, it was looking at releasing histamine from the mast cells, which was induced by a serum. So, injected the animal with the serum that induced that response. The allergic response was inhibited by pollen in 62% of the animals.

So, that's really promising and exciting. And, I know that a lot of people–we have a ton of customers that do use pollen to help support allergic response. I always say propolis is your first stop for that just because, again, depending on sensitivity levels, but there have been studies both looking at propolis and pollen to help support with that, which is really cool.

But, pollen also has so many more benefits. For me, when I think allergies, I definitely recommend propolis. And then, in my mind, pollen is more like a natural super bioavailable multivitamin.

Ben:  Oh, yeah, and it tastes much better on smashed avocado toast or in a smoothie, the pollen does. And, I actually want to ask you a little bit more about pollen just because I eat so darn much of it and I know it's really good for you. But, I want to hear a little bit more about the pollen. 

But, the one other thing I wanted to ask you about the allergy piece was whether you've heard of bee venom therapy. And, the reason I asked this is last time I was in Sedona, the Airbnb I was staying at, the guy who owned it was a bee venom therapy practitioner. I mean, leave it to Sedona to have all these crazy therapists who do all these weird things with crystals and magic and now apparently bees. But, he laid me on a table and I was there for two hours. This guy, his name was Andrew, he had a cage full of bees and he would cover my certain parts of my body with these bees and they would sting me and he'd pull the stingers out.

Carly:  Did he put a mesh over you and have the bee sting through the mesh or he was letting the bees sting [00:24:53] _____?

Ben:  I'm not quite sure if he was taking the stingers out of the bees and applying them to my skin. I was kind of just laying there with my eyes closed, breathing through it the entire time, and a little bit nervous because all I could hear behind me was every time he reach into or open the cage of bees, they'd make a really loud buzzing sound and I felt my heart rate go up and I'd kind of breathe myself back down. And, the stings weren't incredibly painful but you felt this mild tingling stinging sensation every time he'd apply them to the skin. And, I don't know if there's anything you ever looked into or if you're familiar with, but I'd love to hear it your thoughts on this, so– 

Carly:  It is. I took a course in BVT.

Ben:  Okay. Tell me about it.

Carly: Okay, okay. So, bee venom therapy is fascinating. There's a huge community of people with Lyme disease who are having unbelievable resolution. Actually, a friend of mine, her Instagram's called The Heal Hive, she had severe Lyme disease and is 110% recovered and is just a big advocate for this stuff. So, anyone who wants to learn more, she's a great resource. But, yeah, a lot of people are having great effects with that. 

And then, in other cultures, so one of my mentors, he runs a clinic in Romania where they're doing all kinds of things with bee products. They're looking at bee venom therapy, they're looking at potential studying, potential anti-cancerous properties of bee venom. There's a compounded bee venom called melittin, which could be really effective. And then, they're doing intravenous propolis, really, really cool stuff. They're looking at intravenous propolis for autoimmune disease like MS, all kinds of inflammatory conditions. So, really exciting, but with bee venom therapy, you have to be really careful. You don't know what's going to trigger an allergic response.

Ben:  Yeah, I would imagine.

Carly:  Yeah, I've seen situations where somebody's doing bee venom therapy for some period of time feeling great and then they develop an allergy to it. So, it's something that can be unbelievable but needs to be done with guidance. And, there's a lot of great resources. So, I think it's really amazing. I was taught to do it of course in a sustainable way. So, how you do that when bees sting human skin, it rips out their stinger and kills the bees. When you take a piece of mesh, and you put it over your skin and then sting through the mesh, it actually allows the bee to continue living. It doesn't rip out their abdomen and this is just something that I think is a very endearing fact about bees. Bees can sting other creatures and not die, but if they sting humans, they die. Their stingers are barbed and not meant for our skin. And so, while wasps can sting many times, bees cannot. So, if you are practicing BVT, ask about the mesh sheet and that's just a more sustainable way to do it. But, first and foremost, definitely do it under guidance of a professional because it can be amazing and it can be serious.

Ben:  Yeah. Well, first, now that you're saying this, I don't think he used the mesh because he gave me a little cup full of deceased bees, sadly deceased bees that he instructed me to go and do a ceremony over later on. And, my wife and I actually went on a hike later on and I put them on the ground and said a thank you to the bees and prayed that they'd go on to a better bee place or I said something nice about the bees, a little ceremony. But yeah, the bees died and I can also tell you that that night, we went to dinner and I was on fire, super talkative, felt my sympathetic nervous system was ramped up. And apparently, there's some kind of an immune system regulation that occurs.

Carly: Well, bee products are immunomodulatory agents. So, that's why someone like me who's autoimmune, specifically for me, propolis has been life-changing. I have really transformed my immune system using propolis daily which is really cool.

Now, what about the pollen? This is the stuff that of course people will have at the health food store, they'll sprinkle in their smoothies or like I said, it's fantastic on avocado toast. But, tell me about the pollen and the benefits of it.

Carly:  Yeah. So, I am obsessed with pollen just to say I use pollen every day as well. And, one of the reasons I love pollen and people don't realize this, it's the most bioavailable complete multivitamin you can get. Forget any capsule, pollen has B vitamins, minerals, free-farming amino acids, antioxidants, and protein. There's actually more protein per weight than any animal source. And, that's per weight obviously in pollen small, but it's just a really cool nourishing nutritive substance. So, I love pollen. You don't need much, especially if you're using our pollen, our pollen's raw, and it's coming from Wildflower Apiary, so it's quite potent. So, all you really need is a teaspoon. You really don't need much at all. But, pollen is really cool, it demonstrates a series of actions. It's anti-fungal, anti-microbial, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory. It's actually a hepatoprotective agent, which is really cool, so it has protective effects for your liver. It's being studied for anti-cancerous results. It's immunostimulating. So, a lot of really cool stuff.

One study on pollen that I just think is so interesting, and this was a pretty big study. So, they did this with a ton of rats and they basically poisoned these rats and unambiguously showed the detoxifying action of pollen. So, these rats were actually poisoned and then the pollen lowered the level of poison in their blood.

Ben:  Is it acting as a bioremediant like activated charcoal or chlorella or something? And, the reason I asked that also is because that would then kind of indicate you wouldn't want to take a bunch of other supplements with it because it might soak those up too or something.

Carly:  Yeah. So, I need to look back at the study and I'll send it to you so you can share this with your audience, but I don't believe it was acting in that way. And, I don't know that it would act that way just because pollen is so nutrient-dense and has so many different vitamins and minerals, but I'll send you the study so you can share it. But, I always take pollen with other things. I usually put it with food or take it with a smoothie. And, that's typically the way that it's consumed, general convention. So, I don't know that it has those kind of effects where you want to take it on its own, but I'll share that study and I'll get back to you on that.

Ben:  Well, for me, it's crack. Like I mentioned, I put it in smoothies, I'll put it on avocados or avocado toast and then I like to eat it by the spoonful with little chunks of dark chocolate stirred into it. But, I actually wanted to ask you too, I'm like, “Gosh, I wonder if Carly has a couple other uses of pollen because I just I love it so much, I've always got it in the fridge.” So, anything else you like to do with the pollen?

Carly:  So, anyway that you would use chia seeds, hemp seeds, anything like that, I use pollen so I put it like you do on avocado toast. I honestly put it on everything. For me, a big thing is after a workout, pollen really helps with muscle recovery. It's got the free-farming amino acids. I'll take some of it and then you also see a lot of people using it before a workout. And, there was actually a study, a human study looking at Eastern European competitive athletes and it found that those who took pollen before activity had increased endurance. And, that's because when you take pollen, it increases your blood hemoglobin value. So, it basically helped to oxygenate the tissue. So, another just cool way to use pollen is just shoot it before a workout or mix it into your pre-workout. Something that's kind of interesting about pollen that's happening right now. So, I do not know if you are a big TikToker, Ben.

Ben:  No, I've been avoiding it but go ahead.

Carly:  Yeah, totally fair, I get that. But, there have been all these TikToks talking about how pollen affects boobs. And, all of these girls that are taking pollen and sharing their boobs, changing, getting bigger, I suppose. And so, that's just been a cool trend to follow. I have not seen a human study on that. Now, we're kind of early in human studies on this stuff generally, but I haven't seen a study. But, I do know that bee pollen contains phytosterols, which can help to regulate hormones and has shown mild activity on estrogen receptors. So, it's not totally crazy and I just like pollen as well because it has, again, some of these other bee products that really nice balancing effect on hormones. But, more than anything, pollen for me, it's my multivitamin, it's just kind of a protective nourishing substance. And yeah, it's something that I take pretty much every day.

Ben:  Yeah, propolis for babies and pollen for boobs. There you have it. You might have just made a bunch of guys nervous though about getting gynecomastia or something from pollen. And, I don't imagine you'd see over-aromatization or excess estrogen in males, would you?

Carly:  No. I mean, my husband takes pollen every day, almost every pro athlete. Okay, we have a lot of pro athletes that are customers just because of the endurance effects and the BCAAs in pollen. So, I haven't seen that. I've been using pollen for years. I haven't been closely monitoring my boobs in that way. And again, I haven't seen a single human study that specifically talks about breast growth. But again, it has a hormone-balancing effect. And, maybe in an environment that we live in with a lot of toxicity, it's helping to kind of balance that and help the body regulate. But, I would say of our pollen customer base, it's pretty 50-50 men and women, and again, a lot of pro athletes that have been using this for years. And, my husband is boobless, so I'm not too worried.

Ben:  You mentioned that you could use them in the same way that you use chia seeds. Chia seeds will expand in water and make this nice gel if you mix them with water or bone broth or juice or coconut water, for example, which is fantastic. Do you know if pollen will create a gel if you soak it?

Carly:  A little bit. I've put it in water. I've mixed it with water, creatine, that sort of thing, before a workout. It's not really a gel, but it softens quite a bit. But, I put it in smoothies. I like pollen a lot because it's kind of more savory and so it just pairs really nicely with different foods. Yeah. My little brother, if I'm making him a PB&J, I'll lowkey pour a pollen in. So, I'm sneaking it in everything. And yeah, it's just a really nourishing food. And then, for the babies, that one is actually the royal jelly, not the propolis. The propolis is what you want for immune health and gut health. That's your go-to.

Something else that is really cool about royal jelly, that's the one that I think got me pregnant that has the studies on fertility. Royal jelly also has a lot of amazing effects on the brain. So, royal jelly is a super powerful nootropic. It contains these two fatty acids that are only naturally occurring in royal jelly. One's called 10-HAD, the other is called AMP N1-oxide and they basically promote brain-derived nootropic factors. So, royal jelly is used often for hormonal balance, it's used for longevity, but you see royal jelly being used very frequently in western medicine for concussion, for athletes, anyone who's had brain injury.

Ben:  Really?

Carly:  Oh, yeah, big time, big time. I used it for my concussion. Our Brain Fuel product, we have this shot and it's got royal jelly, Bacopa monnieri, and Ginkgo biloba that was literally formulated for my co-founder after he had a ski injury and had a very, very severe knocked unconscious concussion situation. So, royal jelly is incredible for the brain. It's also one of the only naturally occurring sources of acetylcholine. So, really cool for brain health. And, there was a study, I think it came out of University of Warsaw and it was looking at how royal jelly actually improves your spatial reasoning. And so, I use royal jelly kind of as a productivity hack as well. So, I'll use it before I record with you or if I'm doing a ton of product research. And, it really helps with focused memory concentration.

Ben:  Yeah, that is super interesting about the BDNF precursor aspects of it and also the choline contained in the royal jelly because choline, I think of that as a fuel for the brain. So, it's interesting to call your product brain fuel, but I tell a lot of people using smart drugs, nootropics, even hefty amounts of say caffeine or nicotine, anything that's shoving your brain into overdrive, choline precursors like eggs and walnut and fish as a regular part of the diet are important as would be supplementing with something like phosphatidylcholine or citicoline. But, I actually didn't know that royal jelly was a rich source of choline. So, that's very good to know. And then, I just interviewed a couple of weeks ago the author of the book, “DNA Way,” Kashif Khan on my podcast and we talked about how me and my sons and many other people, they actually have a genetic SNP that naturally reduces BDNF production. I've known this for years. This is why I, and I encourage my sons to also, we do regular infrared sauna, we use lion's mane extract. Aerobic exercise is also good for BDNF, but now I suppose I could add royal jelly into that equation. That's very interesting.

Carly:  Totally.

Ben:  Yeah.

Carly:  You should absolutely be including royal jelly into that mix. I love lion's mane, by the way. We have a lot of customers that will do a kind of tonic with lion's mane and then throw in a scoop of our Superfood Honey because that's Superfood Honey, you're getting 745 milligrams of royal jellies. You're getting a good dose. And then, our Brain Fuel shots are great because you're also getting the two adaptogens, you're getting the Bacopa monnieri and the Ginkgo biloba. So, both plant-based nootropics help to modulate the stress response, help with focused memory concentration. So, that's a nice kind of on-the-go if you need to sort of turn the lights on. That's another one too that before a sporting event, we see a lot of people taking the brain shots.

Ben:  Yeah. And, a lot of people of course are concerned about honey and its impact on the glycemic index. I don't think you'll ever make a keto honey but it's interesting because I actually researched this and looked into it. There's even an article on my website about honey that folks can find. Maybe I'll link to it in the shownotes, but a good honey seems to actually have a positive impact when taken in moderation on glycemic index and insulin sensitivity. I don't know if that's the polyphenols or the flavanols present in the honey, which we know can cause improved insulin sensitivity or if it's some other aspect. And, I don't think these studies are even done on a superfood honey like the one with the propolis and the royal jelly, et cetera, like yours.

Carly: Yeah. I was just going to say that when you add the propolis, pollen, and royal jelly, it's like a whole other level as well.

Ben:  Yeah. We actually selected honey as the sweetener that we use in the Kion Energy Bar for those reasons. We look at a lot of different sweeteners. We wanted something that wasn't a sugar alcohol that could cause stomach upset. We wanted something that was going to be a good stable energy compound that wasn't going to cause big blood glucose spikes. And, that was the one we settled on.

Now, and of course I also use honey, like I mentioned, quite a bit in my cooking. For example, I've been putting on fish. I love this whole Jesus Christ approach to cooking. Use honey and fish and really good sourdough bread, just like the New Testament. And, the honey, a lot of times I'll smear fish with the Primal Kitchen aioli or mayonnaise, and then I'll put honey on top of that, like drizzle honey on top of it, a little bit of salt. Often, I'll save the dill for later because the dill seems to burn a little bit in the oven if you get it up super-hot. They don't broil that or bake it.

Carly:  Yeah.

Ben:  But obviously, we're talking about temperatures in excess of 350. Do you think that if I'm cooking with honey, I should save it for later if I want to keep all the nutrient status or how resistant to something like the Superfood Honey to an oven bake?

Carly:  So, first of all, when you're putting that dill on, sprinkle some bee pollen as well, so good.

Ben:  Oh, yeah.

Carly:  But, to answer your question, so anytime you're applying heat, you're going to kill off some of the enzymes that's with anything. But, to pasteurize honey, you're literally boiling it and you're boiling it for a long duration of time, much higher heat than what you're going to be baking with. So, you're still getting a ton of benefits cooking that in the oven. You're totally fine to do that. I mean, for me, with the Superfood Honey, I'll take a teaspoon of it or I'll let my tea or whatever my drink is, I'll let the heat come down a little bit the same way I do with green tea but you're still getting so many benefits so I wouldn't worry about that. and, honey is what I use in baking.

And, to the point about glycemic index, 100% right. I did really well with the candida cleanse that I did because I was cutting out all these refined sugars, but I've now learned that I will never again in my life cut out a high-quality honey. It just adds so much to your health. It really affected my sleep. So, honey is a great way to hack your sleep. Taking a little teaspoon of honey. And, of course, I'm talking about a good quality honey. I'm talking about a raw honey, a pesticide-free honey. I'm not talking about the pasteurized squeezy bear. So, having a really high-quality honey, a little bit of sea salt, it really helps you sleep through the night. It helps to basically settle your glycogen stores. So, you're not having that wake-up in the night crash. 

And then, honey actually also helps you calm down. It creates this slow steady spike in insulin, which helps the tryptophan in your body cross the blood-brain barrier and be converted into serotonin and then melatonin at night. So, honey is just a really great thing to incorporate.

All of these bee products, the most powerful in terms of antifungal, antiviral, antimicrobial is going to be propolis. If you're looking for immune, that's propolis. If you're looking for gut, that's propolis. If you're looking for brain, fertility, that's royal jelly. If you're looking for multivitamins, nourishment, muscle growth, if you're looking for metabolism regulation, that's bee pollen. Honey has trace amounts of all of these things. So, it's a really nourishing substance, really high in antioxidants. It is the only food on the planet that never expires. So, that's a huge testament to its enzymes, just think about that, it never expires. They found honey in Egyptian tombs that was nutritionally intact. So, anything that has an enzyme content and quality like that is going to be an incredible thing for your body.

Ben:  Yeah. And, I think I spoke incorrectly a few minutes ago, I said the propolis for the babies is royal jelly for the babies like Carly just noted. That's the one for fertility. And, by the way, the honey with salt for the slow release of carbohydrates and the minerals, I absolutely agree. I think also, and I think I even wrote about this in my cookbook that adding collagen or gelatin or essential amino acids into that mix as well gives you a three-fold component for sleep support. So, basically, it's honey, sea salt, and then some source of amino acids. I actually think that you could use pollen because that's also a source of amino acids, isn't it?

Carly:  So, that's what I do. My sleep tonic, it's a base of chamomile tea. I put a scoop of collagen in. I'll usually use our Superfood Honey. So, I don't always use that at night because the royal jelly can be a little bit stimulating, but sometimes I'll use that one, other times I'll use just a raw honey. I pour in some of our cough syrup because our cough syrup has a bunch of different immune-supporting benefits, and then a buckwheat honey base and then some pollen. And, that's what I drink before bed every night.

Ben:  Yeah. I forgot you guys had a cough syrup. You still have the cough drops too, right?

Carly:  Oh, yeah. I love those, the lozenges? That's been the ginger lemon ones first trimester. Anyone who's going through it and nauseous all the time. 

Ben:  Yeah, good.

Carly:  Those help.

Ben:  My wife loves those things. I have them in my bedside drawer and we will go to bed, she's like, “Can I have one of those cough drops?”

Now, the other thing that's interesting here is that I think you can change the flavor of the honey, I'm going to act like I know what I'm talking about here, by what the bees are engaged with in their environment and harvesting.

Carly:  Absolutely.

Ben:  I got a shipment. It wasn't from you guys, it's from some company in Greece and they sent me mountain fur honey and thyme honey and they had an oak honey. The honeys were different colors and different flavors based on the bee's environment. And, I haven't even tried it yet, but I noticed that you guys have a buckwheat honey, which is different than the Superfood Honey. So, how's that actually work and what's the deal with the buckwheat honey?

Carly:  So, buckwheat honey, it's just a honey varietal where they're pollinating mostly buckwheat plants. And, just so everyone knows, for us, we need wildflowers. So, we can't do monocropping. We won't work with someone who monocrops. So, anyone who has a specialty crop, when we do buckwheat honey, it's someone who does have mostly buckwheat plants but they create biodiversity through margin planting. So, when the margins of their crops, 30% are wildflowers. So, that way, we get that diversity in there, but we can still get the specific buckwheat honey. 

But, buckwheat honey is really cool, the reason it's the base for all of our cough syrups and we have a daytime, nighttime, kids daytime, nighttime is because there was a really cool study a few years back looking at specifically buckwheat honey which the bees are pollinating the buckwheat plant and it was comparing it to dextromethorphan, which is the active ingredient in pretty much all over the counter cough syrups. And, it was looking at upper pediatric respiratory infections and it found that buckwheat honey was just as effective as dextro for upper pediatric respiratory infection. So, when I read that study, I was like, “Okay, why would you give a kid dextromethorphan if buckwheat honey is just as good?”

Ben:  Yeah.

Carly:  So, that was kind of the catalyst for our cough syrup. But, to speak more about buckwheat honey, buckwheat honey is a really cool type of honey. There's been a lot of testing done for different honey varietals and buckwheat honey which tends to be darker, more of an earthier taste, it has one of the highest antioxidant counts. So, it has different nutritional properties. And, I always tell our customers, going back to the whole no monocropping with Beekeepers Naturals, you get some variants. Our pollen, it's really cool. Certain times of year, we'll get some purple granules in there. It depends what's in bloom in these wildflower apiaries.

Ben:  Yeah, I've noticed that.

Carly:  There's always very slight variants because we're working with apiaries that have the biodiversity. So, there's a lot of different plants. It's not wild variants, but it is really cool if you get to see that seasonally, the changes, it just based on what's growing.

Ben:  And, is it important at all because, for example, I've noticed that whole foods, they have a lot of their pollen I think in the refrigerated section, is it important to keep any of the pollen or the propolis or the royal jelly cold?

Carly:  So, royal jelly, propolis, if you're getting a raw royal jelly, you want to keep it cold, but if it's in our Superfood Honey, honey's the natural preservation. So, the thing that I like about that Superfood Honey, you're replicating something that happens naturally in the hive, something called bee bread. So, bee bread, a lot of the young bees will eat that and naturally is created with the comb. In this comb, they have royal jelly, propolis, pollen, and honey. And so, I really wanted to make a product that was bee bread, but bee bread is a very nutritive food. Think of the newborn baby bees coming off their breast milk, they come off their royal jelly and then they're eating honey and pollen but they're eating a lot of bee bread. It's incredibly nourishing.

So, I wanted to make a bee bread product. Harvesting bee bread is just not sustainable, it's just not, you cannot do it in a way that doesn't affect the bee's own supply. And so, I kind of recreated bee bread with the Superfood Honey because it's the raw honey and then it's got the royal jelly, the pollen, the propolis. So, that one totally preserved. We're replicating and naturally occurring–well, not naturally, bees are creating it but a natural food substance found in the hive. If you have just the royal jelly on its own though, that you'll want to keep cold.

And then, pollen, so the hive gets really hot, really, really hot, all of these things are totally fine. But, to help your pollen really have freshness, it's totally fine before you've opened it. Once you've opened it, you want to stick it in the fridge or freezer, and then fridge or freezer, it's preference, but you want to keep it a little bit cold once you've opened the jar. Before you open the jar, it's no problem. And, that's not the same for everyone's pollen. For our pollen, our pollen is raw, so I just encourage people to do that. But, when I'm traveling, I keep my pollen out of the fridge for long periods of time and it's also totally fine because the heat inside the hive, and this goes back to your baking question, it can get really hot in the hive. The bees will heat the hive in the winter. It gets so hot in the hive in the summer that the bees will do something called bearding, which you might see if you are at an apiary during the summer. The bees will have to actually get out of the hive because it's so damn hot. And, they cover the outside of the hive box like a beard. So, they're just all congregated together, but all their products are still in that hive. And, they're going back in there and eating them and still getting all the nourishing effects.

Ben:  Yeah, that's a good point.

Carly:  These products are heat resistant, it's just about kind of freshness and preference.

Ben:  Yeah, I suppose I wasn't lazy. I could probably just put the honey on the fish after it's finished and still get the same flavor because I just do it for the flavor, not necessarily the heating caramelization effect. The bee bread is super interesting.

Carly:  You're still getting so many benefits though. I really wouldn't worry about that.

Ben:  Have you ever actually tasted bee bread?

Carly:  I have. Yeah, it's delicious. It's really delicious. After you eat it, it's kind of like you're chewing on the wax, so it's gum and you kind of have to spit out the wax at the end. But, it tastes exactly like our Superfood Honey. I 100% made that product based on bee bread.

Ben:  Oh, man.

Carly:  And, bee bread is really popular in Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, it's like you go to the naturopath and they give you bee bread.

Ben:  No kidding. Wow. Okay. Well, next time I'm in Poland shooting vodka, I'll ask for some bee bread.

Now, the other thing you could do, I would imagine, is just like I do, take some of that wonderful Superfood Honey and smear it all over some sourdough bread that's been toasted and sprinkle a little sea salt on top of that. I know that's not bee bread but that's damn good bread, Carly.

Carly:  That is delicious. Oh, my god, a little grass-fed butter. Again, sprinkle some pollen, the best.

Ben:  Yeah. Wow. Well, you're making me hungry. I'm definitely going to be having honey now, not just with dinner but with lunch. You guys have so many cool products. I think when I first met you, all you had was a honey. 

Carly:  I had the honey and the propolis spray. That was it.

Ben:  Okay. Yeah, that's right. The Propolis Throat Spray, which is always in my fanny pack. And now, you have so many other products. It's been really cool to see your guys' journey. I love your commitment to the environment, to the health of the bees, to sustainability, to the cleanliness of the product, and so I definitely vouch for Beekeepers Naturals, you guys, if you're listening in. 

Carly has actually a meeting she's got to go over to, so I'm going to let her go. But hopefully, I've kind of gotten you curious about honey, propolis, royal jelly, pollen, and all these other cool things you can make with the superfoods from the bees. So, I will put all of this in the shownotes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/BeekeeperPodcast. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/BeekeeperPodcast. You can read more about Carly's story. You can check out all their cool products. I know we have a discount code. I don't have it memorized, but I'll hunt it down and put it in there as well.

And Carly, thanks so much for coming on the show. I've been looking forward to this one for a while. And now, I know even more about these products I'm sprinkling on everything every day. So, thank you.

Carly:  Thank you for having me, Ben.

Ben:  Alright, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Carly Kremer from Beekeepers Naturals signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com/BeekeeperPodcast. Have a fantastic week.

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