Do Beekeepers Live Longer?

There is nothing in the world that could beat honey as an aid to defy old age. Keep bees and eat honey if you want to live long. Beekeepers live longer than anybody else. - Dr. John Anderson, Scientist and Lecturer at North Scotland College of Agriculture

I came across the topic while I was looking for information for my article about Surprising Mental Health Benefits of Beekeeping and ended up jumping into the rabbit hole of ‘Do Beekeepers Live Longer’ and had to share my discovery.

It turns out that the idea of beekeepers living longer is an adage that’s been around for ages.

• Lorenzo Langstroth (1810-1895), inventor of the Langstroth Hive lived to be 85 years old.

• Eva Crane (1912-2007), who trained as a quantum mathematician, dedicated much of her life to bee research and founded the Bee Research Association enjoyed 95 years of life. 

• Karl von Frisch (1886-1992), who deciphered the waggle dance and received a Nobel Prize lived to the age of 96. 

More recently, a group of researchers in Malaysia conducted a study about whether there’s any proof or if it’s just an old wives tale that beekeepers actually live longer. 

The study I came across, which is the first of its kind, is this one here The relationship between telomere length and beekeeping among Malaysians . 

To understand their study, we first have to know a bit more about telomeres. Telomeres are part of our DNA and their function is to protect the ends of chromosomes from becoming frayed or tangled. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres become slightly shorter. Eventually, they become so short that the cell can no longer divide successfully, and the cell dies. Researchers have associated short telomere length with aging. Two people can have the same age chronologically, but have a different age biologically based on the length of the telomeres.

The study examined the telomere length of 30 male beekeepers with 30 non-beekeepers. The beekeepers had been keeping bees for about five years while the non-keeper group had never had experience with bees and did not consume bee products. They were all around the same age too.  

After analyzing their DNA, the researchers discovered that the beekeepers definitely had longer telomeres which is associated with aging more slowly. In fact, the non-beekeepers had telomeres that were around 30% shorter.

In an attempt to figure out why beekeepers have longer telomeres the team of researchers also looked at the frequency of consuming bee products. Honey is widely known to be rich in antioxidants and there is a proven correlation with oxidative stress and short telomere length and thus ageing. Here’s what they discovered:

“An increase of year in consuming bee products is associated with a mean increase in telomere length of 0.258 kbp. In addition, an increase in frequency of eating bee products per day was also associated with a mean increase of 2.66 kbp in telomere length.”

Photo by Maja Jugovic on Unsplash

Which is to say that a longer period of consumption of bee products is associated with longer telomere length, not necessarily the period of beekeeping. 

Could it be possible that the greater telomere length of beekeepers was due simply to the increased consumption of bee products? Or could there be some yet unknown, life-lengthening benefits from all that time spent in the bee yard? In either case, the study proved that telomeres in beekeepers are longer compared to non-beekeepers and since telomere length is associated with longevity of life this means that - for whatever reasons - beekeepers may enjoy a longer life than those who don’t keep bees. 

The science might still be catching up, but one thing’s clear—beekeeping seems to come with some pretty sweet perks. So whether it’s the buzz, the bees, or the long telomeres, here’s to a longer, livelier life.

Pass the honey — and long live the beekeepers!"