Products of Bee Keeping and Their Economic Importance

Bee keeping's two chief commercial products are honey and bee wax, each with its own economic role. Honey is a natural, aromatic sweet food made from flower nectar, whose exact smell and flavour depend on which flowers the bees visited; chemically it is a mix of levulose, dextrose, maltose, other sugars, enzymes, pigments, ash and water, and beyond being a healthier substitute for sugar it is used as an antiseptic, laxative and sedative, features prominently in Ayurvedic and Unani medicine, and is a common ingredient in cakes, breads and biscuits. Bee wax is secreted from the abdomen of worker bees once they reach about two weeks of age; the workers masticate it and mix it with secretions from their cephalic glands to turn it into a plastic, resinous substance. This resinous material also contains propolis, itself derived from pollen grains, and the wax's natural colour is white, with the familiar yellow tint coming from carotenoid pigments. Bee wax finds use in candle-making …