Lego People in the Family

We had an enjoyable visit with the Tunnells over Christmas. I always love grandkid visits, but it is especially fun to have kids in the house at Christmas.  We all went to see Frozen one afternoon. It was quite the interactive experience to watch the movie with Lucy sitting on my lap. She gets really into the movie and cries at all of the sad parts like a few other people in the family.  We watched a trailer for the Lego Movie then found this large cardboard poster in the lobby with a hole for wannabe lego people. 

Britton Tunnell as a lego person

Lucy Tunnell as a lego person

     I tried a little experiment in apitherapy over the holiday break. I had attended a bee conference a few months ago where the featured speaker was a doctor who does apitherapy. At some point in his lecture he mentioned that bee stings can be used to remove warts. Since I've had a long term wart on my hand I thought it would be interesting to give it a try. You would think that since I do get stung occasionally that I wouldn't have any warts. The point is that the sting has to be immediately next to the wart for it to have any effect.   It just so happened that we ended up with a stray bee inside the shop a few weeks ago. That is a common occurrence for a good part of the year but rather an unusual event in December or January.  I took advantage of the opportunity and Quentin administered the sting right next to my wart.
     Usually when I get a sting, I make a point of removing the stinger right away to minimize my reaction. In this case I left the stinger in my finger until the muscle pumping in the venom stopped pulsating.  As a consequence I experienced more redness and swelling that I would normally get from a sting on the hand. The swelling and itching lasted about three days. After the swelling went down the wart was still there but seemed smaller to me.  I'm going to try this again when the weather is warm and I have more ready access to stray worker bees.

The wart in question

       Another method of wart removal which involves beehive products is the use of a propolis tincture. A Ukrainian customer once told me how his teenage son had been badly afflicted with warts on his head and face. He had taken his son to a dermatologist who had in succession medicated the warts, frozen the warts, and burned the warts. Yet after each treatment the warts had come back. Finally he decided to use the traditional Ukrainian treatment for warts. This consisted of drinking a tincture of bee propolis dissolved in rum.  After the son drank the tincture every day for a few weeks the warts disappeared and never came back.  The Ukrainians usually dissolve their propolis in vodka. I'm not sure why he used rum unless that is the kid version of the remedy.