I love how generous nature is with its gifts 💚 It's just that humans (in our part of the world), in our hectic lives (and diets and medicine cabinets), no longer know as much about what is closest to us.
Honeycomb = Raw and untouched honey! Straight from the bees to you!
Here you get not only exceptional honey, but also remnants of pollen, propolis and beeswax. Eat it in pieces, enjoy the delicious taste and smile. Can be enjoyed on its own, with coffee, with cheese or a slice.
For thousands of years, humans have relied on bees to pollinate crops, and on honey as food and medicine 🐝 In a time when bees are threatened by human use of pesticides and other things, and bees are dying in large numbers, we need to learn as much as possible and become more familiar with bees, honey, and all the wonderful things bees create in interaction with plants, so that more people join in and take care of bees and the plant diversity they need. 🐝 🌼 A perfect cycle and ecosystem that we MUST take care of.
Ancient Egyptians swore by honey🍯, and so did the Assyrians, Chinese, Greeks and Romans who used honey for many different purposes, and especially for the treatment of various injuries, ailments and diseases🤕. Aristotle, for example, wrote about the good effect of honey for treating wounds, around the year 350 BC. As a wound treatment, honey has even found its way into some Norwegian hospitals in burn departments in recent years 👍. And the body of research, the amount of studies, that show the fantastic effect of honey on this, is enormous. Ask me for references, and I can give you many hundreds! 📖
So what is this amazing natural wonder and golden gift? 🍯
Honey starts as nectar, which bees collect from thousands of flowers 🌼🌸 by sucking it in with their proboscis. The bees fly the nectar home to the hive, where it is handed over to younger worker bees who change the nectar via digestive enzymes, chew it, put it in hexagonal cells and then finally flap their wings vigorously to evaporate most of the water in the nectar, so that there is no more than about 17% water. This is how honey becomes, a stable product rich in fructose and glucose. The color and taste of honey varies depending on what nectar/flowers the bees have collected from, and from what I have learned, you can even distinguish the most medicinal honey by color: the darker, the more medicinal.
That honey has good medicinal properties should not be surprising, as honey after all comes from plant nectar 🌼🌸, and plants have been known for their medicinal value both in ancient and modern times, all over the world. This is a huge field and incredibly exciting, I think. 🐝🌼
The medicinal value of honey is largely due to its antibacterial and antifungal properties. For example, the consumer can easily see this by the fact that jam, marmalade and other foods go bad after a few weeks, while honey stays super good for many, many years.👏 So, it is obvious that honey has an inhibitory effect on bacteria and fungi 🦠🍄, but it was not until the 1930s that this effect was scientifically demonstrated. Over the past 60-80 years, this inhibitory effect on bacteria and fungi has been shown in numerous studies on a wide range of bacterial types, including bacteria that can cause disease in humans.
There is even a 🍯 Honey Research Centre at Waikato University in New Zealand, where researcher Peter Mollan has done an absolutely outstanding job of compiling the studies on honey as medicine, which now constitute a mountain of research documentation. Mollan's work has taken honey out of the realm of myth, and into the realm of medicine: "The therapeutic potential of uncontaminated, pure honey, is grossly underutilized." ⚱️👑
For example, there is no better wound healer than honey, so it bears repeating! It's about the formation of hydrogen peroxide that occurs as soon as honey comes into contact with skin and mucous membranes. And you probably have this first aid kit in your cupboard at home! Isn't it fantastic?
In addition to wound healing, honey can help strengthen the immune system, reduce infections/inflammation, stimulate cell growth (perfect when wounds don't heal easily and quickly), and there is antioxidant activity in honey (mostly in dark types it seems). Honey has shown the ability to relieve diarrhea, ulcers, infections, irritable bowel syndrome, and bacterial infections. And much more 🤩🍯🐝
Honey is also a gourmet food, so sweet and delicious, it enhances the taste of food and drinks, and it is also perfect for skin and hair care. Yes, I now realize that I have to write more about honey with these properties in mind 😂🤩🐝🍯 But, today I just wanted to highlight what kind of gold nature has generously given us and point out something not everyone knew about honey! Quite magical indeed, and the magic is tasted in the table honey.