Get your health benefits from the hive with 4 amazing bee products!
Bees do a whole lot more than just making honey. They’re actually extremely hard workers. They pollinate the many plants that feed us, and protect their hive and support their queen, while preparing for times of scarcity. They also skillfully make 4 different medicinally used products. Bee products and their health benefits can help you when you're feeling under the weather, while providing a dose of antioxidants and nutrition.
4 Bee Products Worth Trying
1. Honey
It’s not just the bears that love honey, most of us do too. Can you blame us? Honey is delicious.
To make honey, bees gather nectar from flowering plants. The nectar is stored in their stomach, and mixed with enzymes transforming it into a more liquid form of honey. Once the bees return to the hive the honey liquid is deposited into the honeycomb. But the works not over yet, the honey gets fanned by the bees wings to evaporate excess water, creating the delicious sticky honey that you see when you buy raw honey from your local farmer’s market.
There are a lot of different types of honey, that can vary in taste, and nutrition. For the best health benefits,
the number one thing you want to look for in honey, is that it’s “raw”. Raw honey is unpasteurized, which means it’s rich in minerals and live enzymes. Honey is often used to sooth a sore throat, but it can also be applied to burns, or even used as a facial wash.
If you’re buying locally produced honey, the pollen content may even help you
adapt to allergens in your region if taken prior to
allergy season.
2. Bee Pollen
Bee pollen is often coined a superfood. It’s a rich source of vitamins and minerals, and acts as the main
protein source for young bees.
It’s made from the dusty golden pollen that bees collect from flowers. They combine it with honey and press it into granules.
Bee pollen can be used as a nutritive supplement to your diet in granule form or taken as a supplement.
3. Bee Propolis
Bee propolis is to hives like caulking is to homes. It’s a resinous substance that bees use to fill cracks and holes in the hive. It also helps to protect the hive from contamination and invaders thanks to its anti-septic properties.
Making propolis takes work. Bees collect resins from trees, combine it with honey, and beeswax and then chew the mixture adding the final ingredient, their saliva. Raw propolis is sometimes called “bee glue” because it’s rather sticky and thick in texture.
Bee propolis is a great source of antioxidants, but it’s also often used in herbal medicine for sore throats and oral or mouth infections.
Next time you get a cold, give
bee propolis tincture or
spray a try.
4. Royal Jelly
Royal Jelly is the royal food of the Queen Bees. It’s also fed to larvae, and the bees destined to grow up to become queens. It’s a milky secretion that comes from special glands in the heads of worker bees.
It’s a source of antioxidant and used as a nutritive tonic in herbal medicine. Studies also show that
royal jelly helps to support
healthy cholesterol levels.
Bees are amazing little creatures, and their natural medicines are proof of that. Promote your health straight from the hive and give bee products a try. Your immune system will thank you.
Which bee products do you use for your health?
