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Received Jul 31, 2017; Accepted Sep 24, 2017
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Geopropolis is produced by stingless bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, and Meliponinae) [1] from a mixture of wax, pollen, and the mandibular secretions of bees together with plant resins and the addition of soil, which characterizes and differentiates this material [2, 3]. Geopropolis is deposited in the hive to seal cracks, delimit the cavities where bees reside, and prevent excessive air entry [4].
Analyses of the chemical compositions of geopropolis samples produced by different species of bees have demonstrated the complexity of this natural product, which contains phenolic compounds such as benzophenones [5], phenolic acids, hydrolysable tannins, and flavonoids [1, 6, 7], in addition to terpenes and long-chain fatty acids [8, 9].
The compounds found in geopropolis are likely responsible for the biological activities that have been described in several studies, including antimicrobial [7, 10, 11], anti-inflammatory [2, 12, 13], antinociceptive [14], gastroprotective [15], antioxidant [1, 6, 16], antiproliferative [5, 11], antimutagenic [7], and cytotoxic [17, 18] activities.
Among stingless bee species,