Do beekeepers live longer

[Derek Uchman]

I was told the other day that beekeepers live longer. The person who said this added it was just an observation rather than an established fact. What does everyone else think? Is there any basis for this?

[gavin]

LOL! I wouldn't pay too much attention to that fellow - he can bulls&%*£ along with the best of them. But your car-share person and the fellow I met in Perth might suggest it was true. Or is it simply that beekeeping keeps you going out and even being sociable, so the old ones are noticed more?

Looking forward to seeing what the rest make of this.

G.

[Neils]

I think it's just that from February to April feels like 100 years :D

[Jon]

Well they live longer than lion tamers, bungee jumpers, mercenaries and deep fried Mars bar aficionados.

[gavin]

I rest my case. These Chinese know a thing or two about living long lives.

http://en.uuuwell.com/article-244536-1.html

For anyone unwilling to click the link, Confucius, he say:

'.... hundred people to more than 200 people over a letter, investigate and understand the reasons for their longevity, a careful analysis of these when he wrote back, we found a striking phenomenon: there are 143 of these people is longevity beekeepers, there are 34 people had been kept a bee people. Thus the first to propose "beekeepers longevity" argument. Our physician, nutrition and health experts to investigate career longevity analysis of consensus, in turn discharge the order of 10 kinds of career longevity: First, beekeepers, and second, the modern farmer, third, musician, painter Fourth, Fifth, writers and artists, six medical staff, seven sports workers, eight horticulture operators, nine are archaeologists, ten is a monk.'

I believe that Google helped turn the Chinese into some sort of variant of English. I'm sticking to beekeeping as a hobby, and eating plenty of Chinese carry-outs just to be sure.

[Jon]

A koi carp named Hanako lived to the ripe old age of 226 and there is no record of it ever keeping bees in a national, Warré or top bar hive.

[gavin]

LOL! The Fortingall Yew is reputed to be about 5000 years old and although it is a mere shell of its former self I'll bet in its prime it was home to the odd colony or two. Unfortunately I have no proof.

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/INFD-6UFC5F

Interestingly, there is a yew in the estate where I keep my bees which might be (the yew, not the estate nor the bees) even older. And there are bees in the castle roof mere yards from the yew.

[Jon]

5000 years? Pah, tis but a sapling!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080414-oldest-tree.html

And this one is no spring chicken and has at least two distinct colonies in it.
They are definitely honey bees as one stung me right between the eyes Sunday week ago.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc45ns9slS4



This one is far bigger and likely has bees in it but I haven't paid homage to it in a long time.

http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/706-el-arbol-de-tule-probably-the-biggest-tree-in-the-world

[gavin]

Re-sprouting from rootstocks hardly counts but I'll give you that, it is old. The Druids will have been dancing naked round the Fortingall Yew in its prime, anxious about the bees in that tree stinging them between the ... well, between something.

El Arbol de Tule is a mere baby though.

[Jon]

Would look good in a back garden I reckon.
Oneupmanship over the neighbours who insist on planting Leylandii and Castlewellan Gold.

There must be beekeepers on some of the National Executive bodies who are at least 200 years old and I have not mentioned the BBKA up to this point.

[Jimbo]

:pOh! I thought you were thinking of the SBA there for a minute

[gavin]

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?

[madasafish]

Of course beekeepers don't live longer.

They just act as if they are older.

[Trog]

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!)

[Trog]

Oh, and he'd been a beekeeper!

[Jimbo]

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.

[fatshark]

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 ...

[Adam]

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!