We fill our lives with honey and wax.. giving  humans the two noblest things, which are sweetness and light. – Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’sTravels) 1773

Honey bees give us golden gifts as well as honey: wax, propolis, and pollen. Beeswax (made inside bees’ bodies) has oodles of uses, including in food-wrap (goodbye plastic!), polish, jelly beans, artists’ media, dental floss and cleaning up oil spills. It’s a best for candles because it gives a sweet scent and a lustrous, smokefree light. Propolis is the bee’s cleaning product – a sticky, germ-killing resin they collect from plants. It’s used to plug cracks and keep the hive healthy. Propolis fights infection in humans, especially in the mouth. Pollen is rich in protein and vitamins for the bees; but humans eat it too. The boxer, Muhammad Ali, ate pollen, which may explain his motto: ‘I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’.

Tags: honey bees, science

This entry was posted on Friday, April 5th, 2019 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Bees, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.