Thank you to Cometeer for sponsoring today’s episode!

Cometeer is 100% brewed coffee, flash frozen and delivered to your door. Check the link in the description and you’ll get 30% off your first order plus free shipping! [♪ INTRO] Honeybees make more than just honey.

They also make something called propolis, or bee glue. This is a sticky substance that is made out of the resin the bees collect from trees and plants and a bit of their own spit. And honeybees put it to good use in their hives.

Bee glue is very useful in sealing up cracks to keep wind and rain out. Kind of like caulk! However, bees have another, more unusual use for this sticky substance: mummification.

Now, aside from being a great sealant, propolis also has antifungal and other disease eradication properties. That’s because the resin, harvested from plants, contains chemicals that the plants produce to keep themselves safe from diseases and fungal infections. And studies have suggested that it helps bees defend against pests like bacteria and mites.

But wait, what does any of this have to do with mummies? Well, sometimes, unwanted visitors make their way into honeybee colonies, especially during winter. Visitors much larger than bacteria, like moths, beetles… and even mice.

Now, in warmer weather when the bees are active, the bees are able to actively defend the colony against large invaders like mice. But when the weather is colder, the bees are often clustered together around the queen to keep her warm. And mice may have incentive to sneak in during the winter, since honeybees keep their hives at a constant temperature, even when it’s chilly outside.

And this is a problem, because the bees may be able to kill large intruders, but they can’t always move them. They’re just too big. And having a decaying corpse inside the hive is definitely a risk for the colony.

So since they can’t move it, the bees encase the body in propolis. This creates a protective external layer around the body and seals it off from the hive. Honeybees have been observed doing this with mice and beetles, and it’s been speculated that this may be common behavior to deal with the bodies of invaders.

It has even been suggested that the ancient Egyptians may have drawn inspiration from this behavior as a way to preserve human bodies. Bees were well known to the Egyptians. And research shows that Egyptians coated the bodies of their dead in propolis to help with the mummification process.

While observing bee behaviors probably didn’t establish the entire mummification process, the Egyptians may have been inspired to try it out on their own dead. Indeed, there have been many uses for propolis throughout history. And no doubt there are still many more uses left to be uncovered in this sticky substance!

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