Although honey extraction is an ancient practíce, its use as a source of income is more recent. Over the years several techniques have been developed to achieve greater amounts of honey and also to ensure the quality of the product. Furthermore, bees during their life cycle produce wax, royal jelly, pollen and propolis
besides honey. Pollen and propolis are such as honey, plant derivatives, while the wax and royal jelly are products secreted by glands of the bees. This chapter aims to present ways to add value to bee products plant-derived, namely: honey, pollen and propolis. Uses and new applications are presented. Moreover, the production of honey-fermented products such as mead, honey beer and honey vinegar are also discussed.
This chapter is focused on the application of electrochemical techniques
(e.g., sensors and biosensors), as the predominant methodology, to the quantification of
individual or total phenolic compounds, either in standard solutions or in real matrices
(e.g., plants, fruits and beverages) and their capability for assessing antioxidant
activity/capacity. Specially, the potential application to evaluate antioxidant capacity of
bee-hives products (e.g., propolis, honey) is addressed. Finally, the voltammetric
behavior of Portuguese monofloral honeys is discussed for the first time, taking into
account the expected effects of honey color and floral origin. Also, a possible relation with the expected antioxidant capacity of honeys is discussed,
considering their floral origin. Works describing the use of electrochemical detection
imbibed on liquid chromatographic or capillary electrophoretic configurations among
other analytical methods will not be focused in this review, although their undoubtedly
potentials and proved applications.
This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) and
the European Community fund FEDER, under the Program PT2020 (Project
UID/EQU/50020/2013) and by the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013
unit.
