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Oh! I thought you were thinking of the SBA there for a minute
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Administrator
Jimbo, I was thinking of almost any group of beekeepers. There is usually some sign of longevity - or at least active old age - in any group. That Chinese article seemed to go on to link the longevity of beekeepers to a low rate of cancer. Anything similar in the Western medical literature?
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Of course beekeepers don't live longer.
They just act as if they are older.
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Maybe the longevity is because a lot of beekeepers are also gardeners. We knew a chap who was a retired head gardener who was still cultivating his allotment in his 90s - proper digging and growing giant leeks, amongst other things. (And he had to walk up a steep hill to get to it!)
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Oh, and he'd been a beekeeper!
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My beekeeping mentor just celebrated his 85th birthday on Saturday. Goes down to pick up his papers on his mountain bike from the village and goes walking every fortnight. We are planning to tackle another Munro this Saturday and has never missed a SBA meeting for years. There must be something to this beekeeping.
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Senior Member
Just came across this ageing thread while doing some research. Three years after the conversation above this paper was published:
Nasir et al., (2015) The relationship between telomere length and beekeeping among Malaysians in Age 37:58
Quote from the abstract ... Interestingly, we found that the telomere length of male beekeepers was significantly longer than those of male non-beekeepers with a p value of less than 0.05, suggesting that beekeepers may have longer life compared to non-beekeepers. We further found that the consumption of bee products for a long period and frequent consumption of bee products per day are associated with telomere length.
Telomeres are repetitive bits of DNA at the ends of chromosomes. As you get older (well, not you obviously as you're a beekeeper!) these shorten significantly. It's a well documented marker of ageing.
The paper hasn't really left it's mark on science, having been cited only 6 times subsequently ...
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Senior Member
So - a spoon full of honey every day then!
One of the shops that sells my honey has commented on some dog owners giving it their pets for various ailments and it seems to work (no placebo effect with a dog, I assume). Honey is good stuff!
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