For some time now, Mr. Mike Cummings of Connecticut has been getting a stinging sensation in various parts of his body some six to 25 times a day -- but he doesn't mind.

In fact, he regularly and intentionally stings himself with live bees to acquire that very feeling.

"Why do I do something as crazy as sting myself with bees?'' he asked a Thursday night meeting of the Bermuda Beekeepers' Association. "Well, it makes me feel good.'' His unusual proclivity notwithstanding, Mr. Cummings is no ordinary masochist.

A sufferer of multiple sclerosis, a chronic and progressive disease that attacks the central nervous system and can result in speech and visual disorders, muscular incoordination and partial paralysis, he claims that the bee venom that secretes into his system after each stinging alleviates his symptoms and improves the quality of his life.

Some two to three weeks after he started his atypical treatment, Mr. Cummings told the beekeepers, he noted a "significant'' rise in his energy levels and a marked improvement in his mobility.

"I spend less time on my back than I used to,'' said Mr. Cummings, who is on the board of the US MS Society.

And he is apparently not alone. In the United States, where bee venom has been explored as a treatment for MS and arthritis for about 10 years, an increasing number of those who are afflicted with the diseases are turning to self-induced stingings to alleviate pain and suffering, Mr. Cummings said.

In Europe, Russia and particularly China, he went on, the practice has been ongoing for hundreds and even thousands of years.

"It goes back to Hippocrates and the ancient Greeks,'' Mr. Cummings said. In his case, he usually collects the bees that he uses for the stingings in a jar that's been lined with plain tissue and honey, plucks them out individually with tweezers and compels them to sting him by holding them over his skin and squeezing them slightly.

In the US, most beekeepers will gladly provide bees for the purpose but usually require buyers to sign releases that acquit them of any liability.

Mr. Cummings recommended that anyone who was interested in going ahead with the process first undergo a test sting to gauge any adverse reactions. If there were none more than 20 minutes after the first one, he then suggested that patients start with six stings a day and gradually increase to a maximum of about 20 to 25 a day.

Stingings should be administered every two days and continue for at least six to eight months, he said.

Claiming that the stingings pose little or no risk of a heart attack in the patient, Mr. Cummings said that he usually stings himself along the meridian lines that an acupuncturist would use and feels less of a sting the nearer it is to his feet.

"The closer to the head, the more I feel it,'' Mr. Cummings said, although he cautioned that the hands and feet are best avoided in the early stages of stinging therapy because those areas tend to swell.

Other side effects may include itching in the first three weeks and the development of flu-like symptoms.

"I am certainly not proposing this as a cure for MS,'' Mr. Cummings said of the bee venom, "but if it arrests the progress of the disease...then thanks be to God.'' While bee venom therapy has yet to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration or most of that country's medical establishment, there are at least three current studies in the United States into the benefits of self-induced stingings, including one at the University of Michigan and another that involves mice.

In some individual cases, Mr. Cummings said, the results of the therapy have been nothing less than miraculous.

He cited one MS sufferer who was able to move from a wheelchair to a walker after he stung himself with bees, and told of other patients who have been stinging themselves for six years and are frozen in their progress.

"The (advocacy and support) group that I work with has seen varying degrees of success in terms of stingings,'' Mr. Cummings told his Bermuda audience.

"But I can state categorically that all have improved their quality of life.'' In Bermuda, anyone who is interested in bee venom therapy should contact the beekeeping association's president, Mr. Randy Furbert.

At Thursday's meeting, he demonstrated the procedure by stinging both himself and Mr. Cummings.