Abstract
Nowadays, propolis is used as a highly valuable product in alternative medicine for improving health or treating a large spectrum of pathologies, an ingredient in pharmaceutical products, and also as a food additive. Different vegetal materials are collected by honeybees and mixed with wax and other own substances in order to obtain the final product, called propolis. It is known as the bee product with the widest chemical composition due to the raw material collected by the bees. Different types are known worldwide: green Brazilian propolis (having Baccharis dracunculifolia as the major plant source), red Brazilian propolis (from Dalbergia ecastophyllum), European propolis (Populus nigra L.), Russian propolis (Betula verrucosa Ehrh), Cuban and Venezuelan red propolis (Clusia spp.), etc. An impressive number of scientific papers already demonstrate the pharmacological potential of different types of propolis, the most important activities being the antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, immunomodulatory, and antioxidant activities. However, the bioactive compounds responsible for each activity have not been fully elucidated. This review aims to collect important data about the chemical composition and bioactive properties of the vegetal sources and to compare with the chemical composition of respective propolis types, in order to determine the connection between the floral source and the propolis properties.
Highlights
Plants and propolis have a well-defined connection because the honeybees collect different resins from plants, shrubs, and trees, and use it as raw material for the production of this important bee product
The literature is very poor in information on the chemical composition of the resinous exudates of the plant, and from the literature collected literature, we found the research of the above-mentioned authors contained valuable information about the hydro-ethanol extracts of D. ecastaphyllum (L) Taub. from Brazil
(2012) [110] when they identified that in vitro cytotoxic activity of ethanolic extracts of red propolis against strains of human leukemic cells were superior when compared to the extracts of green propolis
Summary
Plants and propolis have a well-defined connection because the honeybees collect different resins from plants, shrubs, and trees, and use it as raw material for the production of this important bee product. Propolis is an important product of the hive, with many uses for humans It has been used in human and veterinary medicine since ancient times and is characterized by variable chemical composition. This variability is due to the plant sources from where the bees harvest the resins, which makes it different from other natural products derived from medicinal plants [1]. One of the characteristics of this lipophilic material is that it is hard and brittle when cold, and soft, pliable, and very sticky when warm; for this reason, sometimes it is named “bee glue” [2]. It has an Plants 2020, 9, 1619; doi:10.3390/plants9111619 www.mdpi.com/journal/plants
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