Bee products

From time immemorial, man has used hive products as a food or for therapeutic ends.

Today, the following apiarian products are regarded as foodstuffs:

Honey

Honey is a sweet substance that bees produce by enriching the collected nectar and honeydew with secretions of their hypopharyngeal glands. They transform it by a multitude of regurgitations and reduce its water content by ventilation before storing it in wax honeycombs where they let it rest until complete maturity. Honey may be liquid, viscous or crystallized.

Pollen

Pollen is the male gamete of plants. It is collected by bees from the anthers of flowering plants. To transport it to the hive, the bee moistens the grains of pollen with nectar or honeydew drawn from its craw and works them into balls of pollen. Pollen is an essential food for the colony. The bee-keeper collects it by means of pollen traps.

Royal jelly

Royal jelly is a secretion product of the hypopharyngeal glands of the workers. This secretion is used as food for the larvae of the queen. It is obtained by removing it from brood cells with a pipette.

Beeswax

Beeswax is produced by the wax-producing glands of the bee. The bees use it to build honeycombs. For this purpose, they work it with their mandibles and coat it with propolis. The beeswax is defined as food additive E 901. The cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry is an important consumer of beeswax where the wax is incorporated into creams, ointments, pastes, lotions and lipsticks.

Bee products used in cosmetics and therapeutics are as follows:

Propolis

Bees collect resin from the barks and buds of trees and transform it into propolis. They seal off their habitat with propolis. Man uses propolis in medicine as a therapeutic product. It is a powerful natural disinfectant.

Bee venom

In addition to the painful feelings which it can cause, bee venom has multiple biological and therapeutic benefits. Significant amounts of bee venom can be collected by means of a particular harvesting technique..

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