until eventually world standards for these bee products can be established within the frame of the Codex. A drawback for the proposed standard drafts (with the exception of the wax standard draft) is that they are based on existing national standards and on publications which were carried out with different methods and in different countries. This inevitably leads to a very large variation of the proposed limits. For bee products other than honey the next step is to set up standardised methods for the establishment of the standard.