Next time you visit us, you are welcome to sample our honey selection with your tea (or just savour it alone!). You can purchase our honey at the clinic to use for sorethroats or as a skin application (or just to enjoy!).
The Story of a Special Honey
When I was commercial beekeeping in the Peace River Country, I collected this rare honeydew in 1999. The bees were foraging on pastures close to aspen forests. Its distinct full-bodied flavour and unique health properties make this a honey a reserve crop to cherish indeed!
Not deterred by the rare drought conditions that year which quickly dried up flower sources of sweet nectar, the resourceful honeybees found an alternative source! The honeybees found sugary secretions from aphids who were numerous in the aspens and poplars. So this honey is not flower nectar at all, but rather double-processed tree sap: once by aphids and then again by bees! Usually aphids are “farmed” protectively by ants, but in this case, bees slip past the guards and “steal” the precious product! This is in stark contrast to the story of pollination, where honeybees serve flowers and get “paid” with nectar and pollen.
Honey As Medicine
Honey is one of the earliest folk medicines in human civilization. It has been used in numerous traditional remedies since ancient times to treat wounds, burns, skin conditions, infections, indigestion, low energy, insomnia, sore throats, coughs and more!
Honeydew is highly prized in Europe for its unique medicinal properties. Concentrated, dark-coloured, natural antioxidants from tree sap provide protection to body tissues. The active bee and aphid enzymes provide antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties that facilitate wound and burn healing when applied directly to the wound under a gauze dressing.
Antibacterial Properties of Honey
Science reveals the mechanisms of honey’s antibacterial power:
- Osmotic and acidity effects
- Hydrogen peroxide-generating enzyme system (heat sensitive: so don’t heat your honey!) activates with exposure to wound tissues
- Antioxidants and other antibacterial phytochemicals in darker honeys like honeydew
- A nourishing capacity for immune cells at the wound
- Mechanically protective of new tissue at the wound
Scientific Reference:
http://www.honeyo.com/honeyhealing.shtml
Honey Will Not Spoil!
The active enzymes which have been preserved through gentle processing enable honey or honeydew to mature and ripen with time like a fine wine.
The exceptionally low moisture of honey means that it will not spoil. No refrigeration is necessary; just keep the lid on tight so moisture from the air doesn’t get in. The antimicrobial factors that bees add to honey that allow it to not spoil in the warm, humid environment of the hive, are the same factors that make it a healing substance.
Whether for health benefits or for savouring a taste of summer on a special occasion, indulge your senses and delight in a gift from Nature: sunlight transmuted by flower (or tree and aphid), and bee!
Wishing you sweet health and wellness,
Gord Grant
