This Ontario farm uses bees for relaxation therapy. Is it a buzzkill for stress?

“The pheromones from the bees help with your immune system, lungs and their buzz, the frequencies, helps with anxiety, depression, PTSD, sleep disorders and overall health,” Graham told CBC News.

“Your anxiety will go down because the hum of these bees is absolutely amazing.”

The air inside the cabin is rich with honey and beeswax scents. Graham said it adds to the wellness.

There are a handful of such centres across Canada.

Visitors say time at bee farm helped them relax

Christine Brady of Petrolia, a town southeast of Sarnia, is among visitors to Graham’s farm who were contacted to talk about their experiences there.

Brady, who recently was at the farm with her mother and recommends the therapy, said she’s elated there’s a bee bed facility in Ontario.

Before she came across Graham’s far, Brady said, she could only find one in Italy.

“I just went there to kind of zone out and relax. It was just more for the vibration, the smell and the frequency of the bees,” she said.

“I probably got into an almost meditative trance. You kind of go into that mental zone where you’re aware, but you have kind of gone within.”

Ontario Farm Bee Therapy Experience

Annette Bourassa of Barrie, Ont., visited Graham’s farm a couple of weeks ago and plans to return with her friends in the fall. Her experience with Ontario farm bee therapy left her impressed by the relaxing atmosphere and the gentle hum of the bees.

“It was incredible. I can see the benefits of doing it often. I wish I lived closer because I would probably go once a week to get this,” she said.

“The hum of the bees is so relaxing and therapeutic. I just felt very, very relaxed and soothed when I left. It was excellent. While I was lying there, I wasn’t thinking about my stressors, or my clients or my deadlines.”

Bourassa said the experience was not claustrophobic and assured that Ontario farm bee therapy is designed with safety in mind. Participants can also wear a protective jacket during the session.

The cost for each 60-minute session, according to Graham’s website, is $85 for one person, $120 for two people, and $300 for a group of four to six people.

Bee Bed Buzz Started in Ireland

Known as “the queen bee” to her friends, Graham inspects the hives, pulls frames with honey and checks in on the bees weekly to ensure they have enough space.

To set up the bee beds, Graham turned to Paul O’Neill in Ireland for guidance. O’Neill and his partner, Anton Tovarnitskyi, a Ukrainian beekeeper and refugee, built Ireland’s first commercial bee bed houses on Valentia Island, drawing inspiration from bee beds in Ukraine.

“It’s very new and unique around the world,” O’Neill told CBC’s Windsor Morning. “It’s an old form of therapy and relaxation whereby you sit or lie on top of an active beehive.”

O’Neill said bee beds have become popular across Europe, and they have been approached by many people globally, including in the United States, Germany and Canada, to teach them how to build and manage their bee cabins. His facilities are frequented by tourists from around the world.

Today, the growing interest in Ontario farm bee therapy reflects the wider popularity of bee-based relaxation experiences, particularly among people looking for unusual ways to unwind and connect with nature.

Ontario Farm Bee Therapy Gains Attention as Research Continues

In bee bed therapy at Graham’s farm, wooden beds are positioned above active beehives. Protective screens beneath the wooden slats keep the roughly half-million bees separated from visitors as they lie above the hives. (Pratyush Dayal/CBC)

As awareness of the importance of bees continues to grow, Ontario farm bee therapy is attracting attention as an unusual approach to relaxation. The experience involves resting above active beehives while experiencing the gentle sound, vibrations and warm air produced by the colonies.

“The concept of the bee beds relies around energy, microvibration, the sound of the bees and the air from the hive. It’s about this kind of connection with bees that is the key concept of why we do it.”

Graham and O’Neill have described accounts from visitors who said they felt calm and relaxed after spending time in the bee beds. However, there is still limited scientific evidence showing that Ontario farm bee therapy or bee bed therapy can treat anxiety, stress or other mental health conditions.

Health Canada was contacted for information about bee bed therapy but declined to provide comment.

CBC Windsor also contacted the Ontario Ministry of Health with questions about whether bee bed therapy is officially recognized in the province, whether practitioners require certification and whether the service is covered by provincial health insurance.

According to an emailed response from a spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones, insured services covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) are established under the Health Insurance Act (HIA) and its regulations. Bee bed therapy is not currently an insured service under OHIP.

Bee Sounds and Anxiety: What Researchers Are Finding

Researchers are beginning to investigate whether experiences similar to Ontario farm bee therapy may influence anxiety levels.

In Turkey, Yanki Tandircioglu has been studying bee bed therapy and its potential effects on anxiety. Her research has been published in Apis, a scientific journal focused on honey bee-related sciences.

Tandircioglu said that when she began exploring the subject, there was little scientific research specifically focused on bee bed therapy. During her master’s degree, she and her research partners developed an experiment to examine whether spending time near beehives and listening to bees could influence anxiety.

The study involved 60 participants divided into two groups. One group experienced bee bed therapy, while the other listened to recordings or sounds of buzzing bees without using the bee beds. Participants completed anxiety questionnaires before and after the sessions, while researchers also monitored brain electrical activity using a portable electroencephalogram (EEG) device.

According to Tandircioglu, both groups showed significant changes in the questionnaire results, suggesting that exposure to the buzzing sound of bees may have influenced participants’ anxiety levels.

For those interested in Ontario farm bee therapy, the research offers an intriguing area for further investigation. However, more studies are needed to determine whether bee bed experiences provide measurable mental health benefits and how they might work.

But she also noted they could not “observe any significant change” in the brain activity based on EEG readings.

In her paper, she writes this study is “a first investigation” into the effects of bee beds on anxiety levels, laying the groundwork for further exploration in this area.

Since it’s still a relatively new field of research and there is no amassed scholarship around it, Tandircioglu said, she understands why bee bed therapy is still not mainstream.

The sound of the colony is different from a single bee buzzing, and the microvibrations and smell of the beehives, Tandircioglu said, add to the overall relaxing experience. She said the bee sound was found to be closer to pink noise, like waterfalls and rain, rather than white noise.

“Nature always heals, and so do the bees.”