Medical Benefits of Honeybee Products

Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Volume 2017 (2017), Article ID 2702106, 2 pages

The present Special Issue on medical benefits of honeybee products is dedicated to the memory of Professor Wojciech Krol (1956–2016) who was its initiator and first Lead Guest Editor. He specialized in flavons and flavonoids and his interests included propolis and other natural products. Through his studies of propolis, Professor Krol proved the anti-oxdative properties and possibilities of free radicals scavenging through ethanol extract of propolis (EEP) as well as the synergic antibacterial properties of streptomycin and coloxacine together with EEP. Professor W. Krol was also the Lead Guest Editor of the Special Issue “Propolis: Properties, Application, and Its Potential” published in 2013.

Honeybee products have a long medicinal history. All cultures have folk medicine traditions that include the use of honeybee products, that is, honey, bee pollen, propolis, royal jelly, beeswax, and bee venom. These products have been found to exhibit anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral and antioxidant activities. It has been also shown that natural honeybee products inhibit tumor cell growth and metastasis and induce apoptosis of cancer cells. Hence, these bioactive natural products may prove to be useful in cancer therapy.

For this special issue we invited researchers and scholars to submit original research reports and review articles in which they explore aspects of the biological activity of a wide range of honeybee products and their possible applications. A total of 46 papers were submitted out of which, after a rigorous peer-review process, 18 manuscripts have been selected because they represent rich and comprehensive new knowledge. Most of the articles in this special issue are of research character and they present the results of a variety of studies comprising different honeybee products. The accepted papers come from Malaysia, Korea, Lithuania, Chile, Japan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Poland...