Another bee product besides honey or pollen? How about royal jelly, propolis or bees wax?A responsible beekeeper strikes a balance between bee product harvesting and ensuring the safety and good health of her hives. Most beekeepers take advantage only of the hive's honey, but there is many a bee product that can be harvested if time and effort are invested. Use the following links for information on honey, creamed honey and honey butter, and bee pollen.Discussed here are: honeycomb, royal jelly, propolis, and bees wax. Other entrepreneurial spirits, who are often not beekeepers, create new products (often within the health and beauty category) with a bee product or two added as an ingredient.
Another way you can get fresh honeycomb is to remove it from a wild bee nest or natural bee hive. The comb is cut or broken off, and you can buy it in slabs as you can see in this photo of honeycomb that I saw for sale on the street in rural China. Further, you can buy honeycomb immersed in honey (aka 'chunk honey') like you see in the first photo of this section. You can eat honeycomb in a few ways. Personally, I eat it straight off the spoon. You only need a teaspoon of it (some people eat less, some eat more). Ideally, you have a light, thin wax, so you can concentrate more on the delicious taste of the honey. You can eat the wax - it just moves through your body to be excreted. Some people chew the wax, suck out the honey and spit the wax out. You can also smear honeycomb on toast - hot toast will melt the wax and honey a little.
Royal jelly is a nutritious, creamy, milky white substance produced by bees and it is what produces queens from ordinary worker larvae. I talk about this in relation to responsibilities in the hive. Royal jelly contains several amino acids, important fatty acids, acetylcholine, pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), pyridoxine (vitamin B6), simple sugars, sterols, water, and phosphorous compounds. As with bee pollen, there are a lot of claims of health benefits associated with royal jelly. Whether they are legitimate is another story. As I said regarding bee pollen, a salesperson telling you it works means nothing. A study looking at the effects of royal jelly on mice will not tell you whether the stuff works on humans. Well-put-together studies examining humans and the substance to be used will yield the most useful results. I am exploring the literature and will update this site as I find information. The current list of purported health benefits includes:
Propolis is a sap or resin collected by bees from plantlife such as trees for use as protective coating and sealant in their homes. When introducing new frames into a hive, bees will immediately cover the new material (for example, wood) with propolis. The surface then becomes shiny and either hard or sticky depending on the temperatures it is exposed to. --- Return to Bees Alive! home from Other Bee Product Return to Liquid Gold...or Honey from Other Bee Product |
Honeycomb is glorious stuff. It is the honey-filled wax walls of the hive/nest, and it is the purest and most unadulterated form of honey you can eat because it comes straight from the hive. The honey remains in capped (wax-covered) cells and does not undergo any form of processing by humans. Regardless of what research may or may not exist, I can attest to personally ridding myself of about 10 sore throats within 24 hours using honeycomb last winter. This winter, I have no access to honeycomb, and have had a sore throat for several weeks now with a few days of laryngitis. Although a trained researcher, I do pay attention to personal anecdote and the questions it raises.
You can get honeycomb in a few forms. First, some beekeepers purposely plan for and harvest honeycomb to sell as a bee product. You can purchase sets of small, shallow, plastic dishes that fit into the frames inserted into the hive. Normally, a frame holds a wax base upon which the bees will build their comb. The plastic trays replace the wax in the frames, and the bees build the comb and fill it with honey as usual. When full, the beekeeper can pull the plastic trays 
out, separate the individual trays and snap lids on them. They are ready to be sold as is.
Recommended Products:
Comvita Propolis Lozenges, Lemon & Honey, 12 count
Boiron Chestal Cough Honey, Children, 8.45 oz
Recommended Reads:
Health and Healing With Bee Products (Natural Health Guide)
Bee Pollen and Your Health
