The article presents the history of nutritional and medical uses of honey and its derivatives on in Poland. The oldest polish documents mention honey as a main natural wealth of the country, covered mainly with forest, meadows and pastures. Such favorable natural conditions resulted in rapid development of beekeeping. Beekeepers were keeping the bees in man-made wooden beehives or collecting the honey of wild, semi-wild or domestic bees in the forests. The last method was very popular in Central and Eastern Europe and has been practiced till the end of the 19th century. Collected honey was used to produce many medical preparations, like medicated honeys called "Mellita" and used to treat ophthalmological and pulmonary diseases, weakness and variety of wounds. Some of curative properties of honey e.g. antibacterial and wound-healing properties are still used in modern medicine. Equally popular was nutritive use of honey. Especially popular was fermented honey drink (mead), consumed in large quantities in Poland. Mead, considered to be the oldest alcoholic beverage of the countries of Central and Northern Europe, where, due to climatic reasons, grapevine cultivation and wine production was impossible, was praised and used also for its medicinal properties.