**1. Introduction**

The use of substances with antioxidant ability can be very important in the therapeutic preven‐ tion of diseases related to increased oxidative stress, such as cancer, heart disease and aging. Brazil has a great diversity of vegetation from which bees can collect resins. This gives place to large chemical diversity among apiculture products collected in different regions and seasons.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This chemical diversity becomes important due to the derived biological properties. Given that apiculture products have great chemical diversity they must be chemically standardized before use to ensure quality, efficacy and safety and thus it is possible to correlate the type of product with its therapeutic application.

The word propolis is derived from the Greek word pro that means in defense and polis that means city or community; thus propolis means in community defense. It is a material in resin form with complex and varied chemical composition, which is gathered from various species and parts of plants (sprouts and exudates) and results in a substance of different colors and consistencies [1–3]. Propolis production in Brazil is estimated at around 100 tons per year. A large part of this percentage is for export, either in a raw form as in manufactured goods, reaching high prices in foreign trade and representing an important source of income [4, 5]. Among the apiculture products, propolis has been subject of pharmacological studies due to its antimicrobial [6], antiinflammatory [7] and antioxidant properties [8], among others. This biological potential is due to a synergism that occurs amongst its various constituents. Propolis is an important therapeutic alternative from an economic point of view because of its pharma‐ cological efficacy since it is easy to obtain and presents pharmaceutical properties. The use of substances with antioxidant ability can be very important in the prevention and treatment of diseases related to increased oxidative stress, such as cancer, heart disease and aging [9].

Brazil has a great diversity of vegetation from which bees can collect resins. In addition, diversity increases when products are collected in different regions and seasons. Due to this chemical diversity, there has been intense research over the past decades to classify the differ‐ ent types of propolis and bee products found in Brazil [1, 10, 11]. Propolis needs to be chemi‐ cally standardized before use to ensure quality, efficacy and safety. This way, it is possible to correlate the type of propolis and its therapeutic application, an essential task for a growing market and more demanding throughout the v one of the world's biggest suppliers of bee products [3, 11–13].

In this context, it is important to evaluate the published scientific studies about the antioxi‐ dant activity of bee products from Brazil.
