We love spring time: we love the longer days, we love that everything in nature is coming to life, and we especially love to watch the bees come out to gather pollen!
Right now, the bees are busy stocking their hives with the most magical food: honey.
While scientists are barely scratching the surface on the medicinal benefits of honey, it is an ancient medicine. Raw honey has antibacterial properties that when consumed orally can help fight off and speed the recovery from gastric infections like S. typhi, S. flexneri and E. coli. It has also been used topically to help heal wounds and burns. Raw honey undergoes enzymatic production of hydrogen peroxide, which creates antimicrobial activity. It also helps minor wounds stay moist, and the viscosity of the honey provides a protective barrier to help decrease the risk of infection.
Also, did you know that raw and unfiltered honey never expires? Honey was found in King Tut's tomb and, at over 3000 years old, it is still edible! How can something so nutritious, healing, and calorically dense be forever preserved? We have no idea. Bees are magical.
FAMILY TRADITIONS
Our family is obsessed with honey. We use it for skin care, wound care, and as cough syrup. We also use it for any recipe that calls for a less healthy sweetener alternative. The matriarch of our family has convinced several of our family friends to use honey for a wide variety of surprising uses - including using it to treat an eye infection!! We've also used honey to treat minor wounds for our pets - they, of course, love that we use this wonderful sweetener to fix them up! We love honey for its contradictory benefits: it is high in calories, but helps with weight management; it is a great source of energy for a hike, and also can help increase the quality of our sleep. Just, wow! We don't know how the bees do it but we're in awe of their work. In honor of spring and for the love of honey, we are proposing a challenge...
THE HONEY CHALLENGE
The honey challenge.... if you can call it that! We are committing to at least one spoonful of honey a day for the next two weeks and invite you to join us. We know... it's going to be SOOOO hard to indulge in a spoonful of nature's delicious medicine, but I think we'll all get through it. With sickness being at the forefront of everyone's mind, we think about the positive feelings we get when we know we are contributing to supporting our immunity; and raw and unfiltered honey is a great immune booster. While many people pursue local honey for allergies, ANY raw and unfiltered honey will boost immunity and help combat seasonal allergies and sickness in general. This is why we have such high standards for our honey and have every batch tested to ensure the honey is just the way the bees made it.
The bees know what they're doing - they are just brilliant. Did you know bees evolved to proliferate the hive and not the individual? We admire their commitment to their family and often reflect on how we can be more like them and what we can do to help them thrive.
WHAT SMALL THING CAN YOU DO TO HELP THE BEES?
Plant bee-friendly flowers in your yard: sunflowers, lavender, sage, poppy, rosemary, thyme, and marigold are a few of our favorites to attract our pollinating friends. They'll show their appreciation by visiting often!
THE INFORMATION FOR THIS EMAIL WAS TAKEN FROM THIS WONDERFUL STUDY:
Mandal, Manisha Deb, and Shyamapada Mandal. “Honey: Its Medicinal Property and Antibacterial Activity.” Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedicine, Asian Pacific Tropical Medicine Press, Apr. 2011, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
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