Thursday 21 / November / 2024
NAME: Dr Hassan Talib Mohammed Al Lawati
HOMETOWN: Muscat
COMPANY NAME: Bee Products Healing Centre
BUSINESS TYPE: Medicinal honey and bee products
YEAR STARTED: 2009
CLAIM TO FAME: Healing with honey
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: One, just me
INSPIRATION: The power of nature (and honey) to heal
What inspired you to start your honey business?
I became interested in bee products and honey in 1995 as a researcher and my interest continued to grow as I studied for my PhD in Germany from 2004 to 2008. In 2006 I had my first workshop about the healing benefits of bee products, which was my first step towards starting to offer therapy with bee products, and to start letting people know that bees are not only honey.
How do you describe your business to your neighbour?
I would tell him that my aim is to heal and cure people by going back to the nature and to the medical use of the bees and their products. When I do, I am happy. I would explain to him the miracle of these small creatures and how we can use their gifts to cure ourselves.
What’s your favourite product that you sell?
Bee cocktail, because it is the product that offers everything that we (as humans) need from a nutritional point of view such as proteins, enzymes, amino acids, minerals, vitamins through a combination of the most common bee products: Honey, pollen, royal jelly, and propolis.
What was your greatest challenge when you first got started?
People’s lack of knowledge about healing with bee products, especially with bee sting. They were afraid from the bee sting and had no information about the medical value of bee products. Trying to convince people about healing with bee products and especially about the bee sting therapy was my greatest challenge.
What’s your biggest challenge now that you are up and running?
The length of the therapy and the availability of materials. When I start a therapy I need at least one to two weeks of allergy test period, so for people coming far from Muscat or even from other countries, they find it difficult to pay for hotel and accommodation for that length of time, which makes the follow-up for their case difficult. The other thing is the availability of bee products, I have to buy them from outside Oman, from the EU or UK, and even sometimes from Brazil.
What do you personally see as your greatest success so far?
With bee products and bee sting therapy a lot of diseases were successfully healed, mainly back pain, knee stiffness, and bone diseases such as arthritis, rheumatoid, and rheumatic disease. In addition to that, bee venom therapy helps in thyroid disease, multiple sclerosis (MS), sinus...even for a normal flu, weak immune system, migraine and inflammation. Showing people that we can use bee products and bee sting therapy to build our immune systems and make them stronger was a big success.
What is your dream for your company?
My dream is to expand this centre to become a hospital where I can work in cooperation with medical doctors like I did in Russia in 2014. This hospital was exclusively using bee stings and bee products combined with physiotherapy and honey massage for healing diseases. So, my dream is to open a bigger hospital to be able to help more people.
What do you hope to see as far as the development of your industry as a whole in Oman?
I hope to see this scientific knowledge about healing with bee products spread all over the Sultanate and other countries to help people shift away from chemical treatments as much as possible. Bee products are safe and have no side effect on our bodies if we know how to use them in the proper way.
If you could give one piece of advice to someone thinking about starting a business here in Oman, what would it be?
Before you start your business, you must have the knowledge about it and be confident about your project.
If you were a kind of honey, what kind would you be and why?
I would be a sweet golden honey, because it’s attractive in taste and smell, light in colour and shines in the sun.
