No. You do not need to be a beekeeper to enroll in the Apitherapy Certification Course. The program is designed for health practitioners, herbalists, homesteaders, beekeepers, and anyone called to a deeper understanding of hive medicine.

Throughout the course, however, we encourage students to develop a direct relationship with honeybees and the people who care for them. Students who wish to pursue the AANWP Apitherapy Practitioner certification will need to keep bees themselves or participate in caring for honeybee colonies.

One of the foundations of medicinal beekeeping is power to the producer—the understanding that knowing where hive medicines come from, and participating in their stewardship, deepens our understanding of their quality, integrity, and place within the larger living system.

Yes. You’ll be guided step by step through everything, from understanding bee products and performing test stings to building safe protocols. No medical or apitherapy background is required; a science foundation is recommended.

Upon successful completion of the course requirements, you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion from the Diggin’ Livin’ Apitherapy Institute.

Graduates may then pursue two additional professional certification pathways: Apitherapy Coach through the AANWCand Apitherapy Practitioner through the AANWP. You may pursue either certification, or both.

The AANWP Practitioner pathway includes an additional requirement that practitioners keep bees or participate directly in the care of honeybee colonies.

This course is ideal for beekeepers, wellness coaches, herbalists, holistic practitioners, and health professionals who wish to integrate bee-based therapies into their work.
Please note that apitherapy — including bee venom therapy — has not been evaluated or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and does not claim to diagnose, treat, or cure any medical conditions.

The course includes 200+ hours of content. Each week there will be a module that will include about 2-4 hours of recorded video (plus additional reading material & assignments). There will also be 2-hour weekly live group video call each week. This course will be heavily guided by Joy and Eric McEwen, the instructors, with week by week instruction.  In general, we open a new module of information one week at a time, so that we don't get ahead of ourselves and work on the material of that week.  We have a Live Meet Up Group Call once a week on Thursdays at 12:00 PST.  

Live calls are held on Thursday afternoons at 12:00 PM Pacific Time. All calls will be recorded and available to watch afterward if you’re unable to attend live. We ask that each student plan to attend at least 8 live calls throughout the program.

Yes! This course offers an in-depth exploration of the process of acquiring your bees and introduces the essential tools needed to perform your first test sting—eventually guiding you toward safely administering full-set stings.

The course begins on Wednesday, November 11th, when the Introductory Module opens. This pre-module includes orientation materials, required forms, and questionnaires to help you get grounded before we begin meeting together. 

Our first live call will be on Thursday, November 12th at 1:00 PM PST. After that, we will meet every Thursday at 1:00 PM PST throughout the course. Live sessions are hosted using Kajabi Meet Ups, which functions very similarly to Zoom.

The live calls are truly one of the highlights of the course. They are where we answer your questions, expand on the course material, and help you apply what you're learning to your own practice. We encourage you to attend as many as possible.

That said, all live calls are recorded, so if you can't make a call, that's completely okay. You can watch the replay afterward, and watching the recording counts as participation.

The schedule below is still subject to change, but this is our current working schedule:

• November 12 – Orientation & Welcome Call
• November 19 – Module 1
• November 26 – No live call (Thanksgiving Break)
• December 3 – Module 2
• December 10 – Module 3
• December 17 – Module 4
• December 24 & 31 – No live calls (Holiday Break)
• January 7 – Module 5
• January 14 – Module 6
• January 21 – No live call
• January 28 – Module 7
• February 4 – Module 8
• February 11 – No live call
• February 18 – Module 9
• February 25 – Module 10
• March 4 – No live call
• March 11 – Module 11
• March 18 – Module 12

The breaks throughout the course are intentional. They give everyone time to catch up on the lessons, complete assignments, integrate the material, and help us stay together as a cohort as we move through the course.

The course spans approximately four and a half months, and we have a tremendous amount to cover. We can't wait to begin this journey with you.

Warmly,

Joy

The Apitherapy Certification Course is taught by Joy McEwen and Eric McEwen, co-founders of Diggin’ Livin’ Farm & Apiaries and co-authors of Raising Resilient Bees. Together, they bring more than 25 years of experience working with honey bees, managing a large-scale natural beekeeping operation, teaching beekeepers, and exploring the relationship between healthy bees, hive medicines, and human health.

Joy McEwen is an apitherapist, natural beekeeper, Integrated Health Practitioner, educator, author, and land steward. She holds two Bachelor of Science degrees from Oregon State University—one in Biochemistry/Biophysics and another in BioResource Research—as well as a Master of Science in Environmental Science from Oregon State University.

Joy has practiced apitherapy for more than 15 years, with a particular focus on bee venom therapy and the medicinal use of honey, propolis, pollen, bee bread, beeswax, and other products of the hive. Her work brings together her scientific background, decades of hands-on beekeeping, traditional apitherapy practices, and contemporary research. Joy maintains a clinical apitherapy practice in Ashland, Oregon, where she works with clients both in person and via Zoom.

She serves on the Board of the International Federation of Apitherapy and coordinates its Medicinal Beekeeping Commission, where her work has included developing guidelines around the production and stewardship of hive medicines. She has also served on the Board of the American Apitherapy Society and has taught and presented on apitherapy, medicinal beekeeping, and bee venom therapy nationally and internationally.

Joy's path into apitherapy began through curiosity about the medicines of the hive and their potential for healing—first working with inflammatory issues in farm animals, protecting her family against Lyme disease, and helping Eric with chronic pain. Those experiences eventually grew into a clinical practice, years of study and teaching, and a commitment to helping others understand how the health of the medicine begins with the health of the bees producing it.

Eric McEwen is a natural beekeeper, researcher, educator, author, and co-founder of Diggin’ Livin’ Farm & Apiaries. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Botany and Plant Pathology from Oregon State University and pursued graduate work specializing in population genetics as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow.

For more than two decades, Eric has worked intensively with honey bee populations and the development of locally adapted, resilient genetics. He and Joy manage hundreds of colonies throughout Southern Oregon, where their work has become the foundation of the Natural Nest beekeeping system taught through Diggin’ Livin’.

Eric's approach draws heavily from population biology, natural selection, observation, and the biology of the honey bee itself. His work includes naturally reared queens, locally adapted genetics, uninterrupted brood nests, brood breaks, integrated pest management, forage and nutrition, overwintering, migratory and stationary apiary management, and breeding colonies that can remain strong under consistent management over generations.

He has also contributed to the development of Demeter USA apicultural standards and has served on the Oregon State Beekeepers Association Administrative Board. His teaching connects the health of the colony directly to the quality and integrity of the medicines produced within it—an essential part of the philosophy behind this course.

Together, Joy and Eric co-authored Raising Resilient Bees: Heritage Techniques to Mitigate Mites, Preserve Locally Adapted Genetics, and Grow Your Apiary, published by Chelsea Green in 2023.

Their perspectives are different but deeply complementary. Joy teaches from the intersection of apitherapy, human health, science, and clinical practice; Eric brings the biology of the honey bee, genetics, colony health, and medicinal beekeeping. Together, they teach apitherapy beginning where they believe it should begin: with the bees themselves.

Yes! You’ll have access to live group Q&A sessions with Joy each week, community office hours, and a private online community where you can ask questions, share experiences, and learn from others on the path. 

If you have a known allergy to bee stings, this course is not a fit for hands-on venom work. However, you can still benefit from learning about other hive medicines like honey, propolis, and bee bread, and their therapeutic uses.  That said, we do address allergies to bee stings and ways to address this.  I have helped a few family friends with a severe allergy. The test sting for the certification is not a requirement, but we do spend quite a bit of time preparing the students for stinging themselves.  That said, we will address what to do in a circumstance when someone says that they have had a difficult and scary experience with a bee sting in the past.  My recommendation is to first start with what we would prep for with a 'micro-sting', which is the stinger by itself and then just brush the surface of the skin with the stinger and not even get pricked.  Really go on slow motion and slowly build up to a test sting but to take your time and be really really careful.  Another idea would be for some one like you to purchase a bee venom cream and only put a very small amount on your skin at first. 

In the United States, medical doctors do not have legal authority to administer bee venom therapy (BVT) except for the purpose of an allergy. Licensed healthcare professionals are also generally restricted from administering or prescribing BVT as part of clinical care, as bee venom therapy has not been evaluated or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of any condition.  There are a growing number of doctors who would like to include Apitherapy and Bee Venom Therapy as part of their practice, but are unable to bill any type of insurance for these services. Because of these restrictions, administering BVT could place a medical or healthcare license at risk. For this reason, apitherapy is most often practiced and shared within educational, beekeeping, or personal wellness contexts, rather than as a licensed medical service. And for this reason, organizations are advocating for apitherapy to be acknowledged as part of Western medicine so that doctors and insurance companies can fully participate. Many physicians and researchers recognize the therapeutic potential of apitherapy, yet cannot legally include it in their conventional practice. This situation is similar to that of herbal and folk medicine traditions, which remain outside the formal medical framework despite long histories and centuries of use.

Our course reflects this understanding: we teach from the perspective of beekeepers and educators, sharing knowledge about the medicinal benefits of the honeybee colony. We make no claims to diagnose, treat, or cure disease, and we emphasize that apitherapy and bee venom therapy are not FDA-approved.

No — you are not correct. A wellness coach is a layperson, not under any government or medical board authority. That means they are not legally bound or restricted from practicing or teaching folk medicine — a lineage that goes back thousands of years.

We deeply respect the work of doctors and medical professionals who are helping advance apitherapy and bee-based medicine through research and collaboration with organizations like the World Health Organization. Their efforts are important for helping apitherapy gain recognition within traditional medical systems — allowing doctors to one day prescribe bee medicines and bill insurance companies.

We fully support that path for those who choose it — for people who want to receive bee medicines in clinical or hospital settings and pay for them through the medical system. That has its place, and we believe it will help make apitherapy more widely accepted.

But let’s be very clear: Bee medicines do not need to be institutionalized or government-sanctioned to be legitimate. Bee medicines are part of nature — and therefore part of our sovereign right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, endowed to us by our Creator, not by the FDA, not by the government.

We are firm believers in medical freedom. The best way to have food and medicine security is to grow it and make it yourself. That’s how you stay connected to quality, integrity, and the true spirit of healing. Folk medicine has always belonged to the people — the peasants, the farmers, the mothers — those who work with the land.

Women, for example, have long defended their right to give birth at home. Joy gave birth to all three of her daughters joyfully at home — the last unassisted, with only Eric and her two girls by her side. That same belief in natural sovereignty runs through everything we do.

We eat organic food. We grow organic food. We work with some of the best medicinal herb farmers in the world. And we believe that bee medicines and apitherapy should be as common as herbalism — accessible to everyone, not locked away behind institutional doors.

Through this course and our ongoing work, we’re sharing apitherapy so that more people around the world can understand its benefits, its history, and its power — and reclaim their natural right to heal with the medicine of the hive. 

Hi there, yes, it is complicated and also really personal. The way that I do this is with great intention. I get asked this a lot, and so I think it’s important that I address it.

Well, first I want to share that among apitherapists, everyone does things a little bit differently. For the most part, when an apitherapist picks up a bee with tweezers, a lot of times they use clamping tweezers, so the bee sometimes dies right then before they separate from their stinger. Usually the apitherapist already has a plan as part of their practice for what they do when the bee dies — sometimes they would drown the bee, or squish the bee, or put the bee in a tissue for you to bring home and plant in your garden or something. So a lot of apitherapists do things very differently. I have a lot of respect for folks having their own method that is different from mine — something they had to figure out on their own.

The way I do it is personal to me, and I do it with deep reverence and thanks. This is the method I teach in our course, but I also share other examples from other apitherapists.  In my practice, I wholeheartedly feel that when I go and harvest bees, they come to me as medicine bees. When they are out foraging, it’s already toward the end of their life. Worker bees live about 30 days in the hive, and when they’re younger, they’re mostly doing important jobs like being nurse bees. But as they get older, they move farther out toward the entrance, where life has more risks. Their last jobs are usually as nectar or pollen collectors — and those are the bees that I harvest.

A lot of times they come to me instead of returning to the hive with nectar or pollen. They visit my medicine  bowl, and I feel that at that point they’re choosing to become medicine bees. I personally feel that in choosing to become medicine bees, it is part of fulfilling their highest destiny or mission. That’s really where I’m at in my relationship with the bees — and of course, that’s not for everyone. And there are times when I go into the hive instead of having bees at the medicine bowl, and so I try not to be too strict with myself as my practice is always evolving.

From there, I bring these bees to my therapy office. When I sting my clients or potential future beekeepers, what I’ve noticed is that when the bee stings, she sometimes is disoriented, but she does not die right away. After she stings, I usually hold her in my hand — sometimes I give her to my client to hold, or sometimes she flies to a window. If it’s a nice day out, I’ll put her outside. Lately, to explore this question further, I’ve been putting her back into the jar with the other bees, and she usually lives just as long as the other bees who hadn’t yet stung. So it seems like sometimes the bee dies pretty soon, but sometimes it’s a few days longer — like the others who are already toward the end of their life.

So, it’s actually not correct that they die right away, because they don’t. Sometimes they might if they’re hurt in the process, but most of the time I’m picking them up gently with my fingers or using wide open tweezers, and so they don’t die right away.

And just to go a little deeper into this question — I’ll say that I’m also a meat eater, and as farmers we’ve harvested our own chickens before. I don’t do it often, but I know what it’s like, and it’s something that makes me deeply connected to the animals and the food I eat. We’re also the proud pollinators for Herb Pharm, Oshala Farm, and Pacific Botanicals, so I know these plants personally — their cycles, their landscapes, their medicines. That connection helps me have even more respect for what I’m consuming or working with, and it helps me go deeper in relationship. 

And lastly, I think it’s important to mention that the way  commercial venom is extracted. In commercial settings, bee venom is often harvested by using an electric shock grid in front of the hive, which causes great immense distress to the whole colony. Or what happens is that the bees are collected with vacuums that look like leaf blowers and then the bees are frozen to extract venom from their sacs. Although I don't want to participate with this type of venom collection, I do support the efforts that this medicine becomes more mainstream, and I wish for doctors and researchers to get the permission to prescribe this medicine to others, or include it in wellness products.  However, one of my deep passions is about 'power to the producer' and my prayer is that this medicine can always be accessible or available to be received in a relationship that is deep and personal.  

Great question. Whether I am treating clients in my clinic setting, neighbors on the farm, or future beekeepers learning about the medicine of the hive, I always have them sign a consent form which includes acknowledgement of all adverse reactions even death because of unforeseen circumstances. Even if it's a dear friend, I still have them verbally agree with a witness.  As for this course, we go over during the first week of the class, a passage from the book (the very first page) and required reading of the course, The Health and the Honey Bee, by Charles Mraz, and adopted for this course to say, " This course is not intended for personal medical guidance nor it meant to be a substitute in any way for proper medical care.  The medical and health information in this course is intended to be educational in as much as it reflects the author's personal experinces spanning more than 15 years as an apitherapist.  Any application of the treatments set forth in this book is at the reader's sole discretion and sole risk.  Neither Joy or any of the guest speakers tkae responsibility for any possible consequence from any treatment, procedure, action or applicaation by any person reading or following the information in this course.  Each person and situation is unique.  There before taking any action of a health nature, consult with a qualified, licensed, well-informed doctor or health care provider who is knowledgeable about the topics described in this book.  That professional caregiver, not Joy McEwen, her business, Diggin' Livin' Farm & Apiaries, or any guest speakers of this course, will share responsibility for your health with you."  

For students participating in a live cohort, we strongly encourage you to move through the course with your cohort and complete the program while the material, live discussions, and community experience are active. Students will have one additional month after the final course date to complete outstanding coursework and the final exam.

We understand that life, work, family, and beekeeping seasons can sometimes interrupt even the best plans. Extensions may be considered when needed, for up to one year from the start of your cohort. However, ongoing instructor support, live calls, and active cohort participation end with the scheduled cohort. We encourage students who need additional time to continue working independently toward completion.

We also encourage students to download the provided course materials as they move through each module so that they can build their own reference library to return to after the course has ended.

For students enrolled in the self-paced course, you will have one full year to complete the program. We recommend completing it within approximately six months whenever possible. Moving through the material within that timeframe helps keep the information fresh and allows the modules to build upon one another as you prepare for the cumulative final exam.

Self-paced enrollment also includes two private one-on-one sessions with Joy during your enrollment period—one around Module 7 and another around Module 11—to answer questions, discuss your progress, and help you integrate what you are learning.

Our goal is to provide plenty of time for real life while also giving the course a clear beginning and end. We have found that students get the most from this kind of education when they stay engaged with the material and complete it while what they are learning is still fresh.

Yes. The Diggin’ Livin’ Farm & Apiaries / Apitherapy Institute Apitherapist Certification Course is approved by both the American Association of Natural Wellness Coaches (AANWC) and the American Association of Natural Wellness Practitioners (AANWP).

Graduates who successfully complete the course requirements may apply for professional board certification as an Apitherapy Coach through AANWC, an Apitherapy Practitioner through AANWP, or both. The Practitioner pathway additionally requires participation in the care of honeybee colonies.

The Organizations Behind the Credentials

AANWC and AANWP were co-founded by Stacy Kimmel, ND, PhD, LEHP, and Nicole Kimmel, PhD.

The AANWC's distinguished 15-member advisory board represents more than 240 years of combined health and life coaching experience. Members include:

• David “Avo” Wolfe, MS, JD — Founder, Wolfe University

• Dr. Edward Group, DC, NP — Founder, Global Healing

• Reed Davis, CNT, HHP, FDNP — Founder, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition

• Rachel Scheer, BCFNP — Founder, RSN Institute of Functional Nutrition

• Mark Atkinson, MBBS, BSc — Co-founder, Syntony Institute

• Oscar Coetzee, PhD, MS, DCN — Senior Director of Clinical Education, Designs for Health

The advisory board brings together leaders in natural health education, functional medicine, nutrition, health coaching, and wellness entrepreneurship.

 Meet the AANWC Distinguished Advisory Board