Gift of The World "Propolis"

In advancement of technology and science, life is made easier with the creation of modernize technologies and sciences to upgrade our lifestyle. These made human beings have less time for exercise and burdening with stress and pressure from work, family and friends. Besides, changes of diet drastically, environment pollution day by day and with new disease that do not exist in the past, human being really need to take extra good care of our health. Diseases such as AIDS, cancer, diabetes is still incurable till this stage of advancement of technology and science. Because good health plays prime essence in life as there are saying that goes “Health is Wealth”. Without health, we can’t work and when we can’t work, it means that we won’t be able to create wealth and therefore we will not be able to advance further to create better creativity and innovation of technology and science.

Today I would like to share with you about some health knowledge and health awareness that is important to all of us. I wish to introduce to you a health
product and some health knowledge that is essential. Before my introduction let me tell you a secret why the shape of the honeybees never change since 40 million years ago. Scientific research found that honeybees actually live in this world since more than 40 million years ago and that is 10 times longer before the existence of human being. The amazing thing is the shape of the honeybees never change by the attack of bacteria, virus or germs in so many million years ago. This is because honeybees protect themselves with a natural antibiotic that prevents it’s DNA from damage and to avoid their own biology to be influenced or destroyed.

Let me introduce to you the incredible thing which is the hot rising product in the market that help honeybees not to change shape since 40 million years
ago named Propolis. Propolis begins with a mixture of various amount of beewax and sweet smelling resinous gummy material collected by honeybees
from plants particularly from leaf buds, flowers and tree barks. The honeybees carry the propolis like pollen in their hind legs to the hive whereby in the process of collecting and modeling the sweet smelling resins, they are mixed with some saliva and other secretions of the honeybees as well as wax. Honeybees later coat propolis on entire surface, entrance, food storage areas and queens’s chamber of the hive to protect the bees. The word “propolis” is said by some scholars to have been coined by Aristotle, pro meaning before or in front of, and polis meaning city- the bees’ city. The name reflects its natural state, a “wax city” to keep out harmful intruders, truly a defender of the city. Propolis is collected by beekeepers either by scrapping the substance from wooden hive parts or by using specially collection mats. The raw materials undergoes secondary processing where it will be melt up to 60-70°C and later remove beeswax and other impurities before it became the ‘water base’ Manuka Propolis from New Zealand. Propolis found elsewhere have much lower level of active ingredients as compared to the ones found in New Zealand.

Practically all the ancient civilizations with their millenarian therapies knew and used the products of the bees as a valuable resource in its medicine. The histories of the medicine of the Chinese, Tibetan, Egyptian and Greco-Roman civilizations are also rich, containing in their old writings, hundreds of recipes based mainly on honey, propolis, bee larvae and sometimes the own bees, to cure or to prevent illnesses. From the Hebraic Civilization, the Holy Bible, in some texts, exalts and ennobles the nutritious and medical properties of the honey. Some other texts refer to the propolis as “The balm of
Gileade ", that was used to cure wounds, reaching high prices in the market of that time. In Japan, the use of the propolis took a great pushing in 1985, after the accomplishment of XXX International Congress of APIMONDIA in the city of Nagoya. Nowadays, Japan is the principal consumer of propolis.

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