This is the first English edition of an important book on “Honey bee alchemy” by a Polish researcher. An entirely original, unparalleled work dedicated to the mysterious aspects of the life of bees, the magical properties of the products they produce, and the chemical composition associated with their medicinal properties. This book will be of great interest to beekeepers where they will find answers to many questions, such as:
• Is royal jelly really a “panacea”?
• Can “contamination” of royal jelly have a beneficial effect on its quality, and how can it be “contaminated”?
• What is the “defensive power” of propolis?
• Why microbes that can resist even antibiotics can’t cope with propolis?
• What are the bees guided by when collecting herbal balms?
• What new have we learned about honey recently?
• Is honey a dietary product or a drug?
• Are “herbal honeys” a gross fake or a new valuable beekeeping product?
•.Why is beebread called “food of the gods”?
• What is a drone brood: a troublesome waste of an apiary, or a valuable product?
• What threatens bees and can they be treated without chemicals?
The work of Professor lsidorov shows how little we still know about the secrets of bees, and how much needs to be done to learn them.
VALERY ISIDOROV is a professor and full member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Chemistry of the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) University. His scientific interests lie in the field of environmental chemistry and the chemistry of natural products. He is the author of over 150 scientific publications and 12 monographs published in English, Russian and Polish. For more than 20 years he worked at the Institute of Chemistry of the University of Bialystok, where he created, and for many years headed, the Department of Environmental Chemistry. Currently, Professor Isidorov runs a laboratory at the Institute of Forest Sciences of the Bialystok Technical University.