**1. Introduction**

In Chile, the natural and endemic flora offers many plants with invaluable potential biological properties that may be inherited for products originated from this flora such as honeybee products. Likewise, beekeeping is active and there are several unifloral and endemic Chilean honey that have been reported to have important biological properties such as ulmo

© 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.

honey (originating from *Eucriphya cordifolia*), quillay honey (originating from *Quillaja saponaria*), tevo honey (originating from *Retanilla trinervis*), and others. The botanical origin of honey may be known through a quantitative and qualitative melissopalynological analysis. Honeybees are selective in the use of flower resources. The dominant plant community in Central Chile corresponds to the Matorral, an evergreen sclerophyllous vegetation with quillay and tebo as dominant plant species. The deep south of the country is dominated by temperate forest where ulmo is one of the dominant species. Biodiversity varies along an altitudinal or latitudinal gradient in Chile, so the beekeepers usually maintain their beehives along the native plant communities, so the bee products, as well as their potential biological properties will also be different depending on the botanical and geographical origin. Among the bioactive molecules inherited from a specific floral source, phenolic compounds obtained from honey have been related with the antioxidant and antibacterial properties that they show. Honey as a natural product offers many advantages that classify it as an excellent source of active molecules, which could be used as a treatment of human diseases in the forthcoming years. Among these attractive characteristics of honey, it is important to note that this product has low toxicity and the medicinal properties of honey will help to protect honeybees from disappearance by adding value not only to the significantly important process of pollinating crops and native plants, but also for the medicinal importance of their products.
