Healers, priests, hedge witches, shamans,
apothecaries and your nan have known since a caveman first shoved his hand into a beehive
that bee stings hurt, but now it’s official. Yes that, and honey is good for you. A recent Meta-study by Oxford academics found
that honey is better for treating coughs and colds - upper respiratory tract infections
- than antibiotics. And according to a slightly less insightful
study it turns out , bee stings are indeed painful; the most painful place to be stung
by a bee is on your penis – presuming you have one. I very much doubt that any woman would have
the balls – or shall we call it curiosity? - to give it a go. When scientists aren’t throwing bee hives
at naked people to see what happens they’re usually seeking approval for some new ‘miracle’
cure. And, in 2018, Public Health England recommended
that honey should be prescribed before antibiotics for coughs and colds. Previous to that in 2007 the FDA approved
Medihoney, a honey-based gel used for wound treatment. But certain truths are self-evident, and just
as most people know it’s a bad idea to get stung on your private parts, humans have known
about the medicinal properties of honey for as long as we’ve being sticking our fingers
and other curious parts into holes Thousands of years of honey wisdom has been gleaned
through the trial and error process known as history – or as I like to call it ‘let’s
see what happens if we rub this on our nipples’. And what did our ancestors discover? That honey is magic. In a world with no antibiotics it was often
the most effective and only cure for any number of ills. And therefore it was highly prized, and sometimes
worshipped. We have records from the ancient Sumerians
and Egyptians, recipes for salves and other remedies, many of which are based on or use
honey. Ayurvedic medicine, an ancient Indian form
of healing, uses it to aid everything, from vomiting to obesity, stress, jaundice, stomach
ulcers and much more. It was often left in tombs for the dead to
take with them to the afterlife, showing how highly it was valued. There’s even a fifteen thousand year old
cave painting in Spain of a man climbing a tree and harvesting honey from a beehive. No penises were depicted – or, one hopes,
harmed - in this endeavour. The Greeks went even further and worshipped
it as the nectar of the Gods. Well, the Greek Gods were always a bit weird. Cleopatra is reputed to have bathed in honey. Some cultures even mellified their dead, which
is the practise of steeping the dead in honey to preserve them. A 16th century Chinese doctor wrote that the
Arabic people took it one step further. In a unique twist on old age social care,
elderly Arabic men sacrificed themselves for their descendants. As they neared the end of their life they
supposedly gave up food and drink, only consumed honey – and bathed in it. Then, when death finally came, they were mellified
in stone coffins. A hundred years later they were exhumed, their
bodies having decomposed and mixed with the honey. This corpse-infused honey was then used to
heal wounds, fractures and limbs, with only a small amount taken internally for the cure. So, that’s alright then. Not disturbing in the slightest. What is disturbing is the story – though
perhaps a legend – of an archaeologist who unearthed two sealed earthenware jars full
of Pre-Hellenistic honey at a dig in northern Israel. He tasted the honey, which was apparently
quite good. But then, as he dug a little deeper, what
he discovered made him rather regret his ancient amuse bouche – in the bottom of the jar,
were the bones of an infant child. Sweet. That’s rather vomit-inducing if you ask
me. Do you know what else is vomit-induced? Honey. That’s right, honey is little more than
vomit. Bee vomit. The honey making process starts with scavenger
bees collecting nectar and pollen from flowers, then transporting it back to the hive as they
start to digest it. Here they regurgitate it, passing it on to
worker bees who repeatedly consume, semi-digest and vomit it up again and again and again,
until finally, somehow, they sense it’s ready. That or they’re just sick of the whole process. Finally, they fan it with their wings to evaporate
the last of the water, and then top it with a layer of beeswax to seal it into the honeycomb
for a nice tasty treat in the winter months. Unless, of course, a wandering beekeeper,
scientist, caveman or penis pops by to steal it. It’s a bizarre and convoluted procedure
involving complicated chemical processes – but put simply, honey is the combined vomit of
many different bees. In the past stealing honey usually meant killing
the bees and destroying their home – that was until 1814, when Ukranaian Petro Prokopovych
invented the first prototype for a wooden hive frame and ever since we’ve been able
to humanely farm honey without causing too much disruption. But it is this mysterious process, powered
by the enzymes in bees’ stomachs that semi-digest the nectar, which grants honey its unique
qualities. By repeatedly digesting it, and drying it,
over and over, the bees create a supersaturated solution that contains more dissolved material
than the solvent - in this case the water - can dissolve. As a result, honey is not only anti-inflammatory,
antimicrobial and antibacterial but also has a variety of other health benefits. It’s rich in antioxidants, which are thought
to ward off heart attacks, strokes and even some types of cancer. It may improve cholesterol levels, it reputedly
reduces ulcers and gastrointestinal disorders, and can heal wounds and burns. It’s even slightly anti-viral and has proved
effective when applied to cold sores, which are caused by the Herpes virus. Honey can impede the growth of E.coli, salmonella
and MRSA, the famous antibiotic-resistant hospital bug. One of the reasons honey is so hard to understand
is that there are many different types, with a variety of properties and effects, all dependent
on the type of nectar and pollen used to produce the honey. Honey can be made from a single flower – unifloral
– or a combination of many different flowers – you guessed it, mutifloral. It can be raw, straight from the beehive,
or pasteurized, heated and strained to eliminate bacterial or fungal contamination. Some types of honey are toxic and can kill
you; some can make you fly – or at least make you think you can fly. It all depends where the bees get their pollen. You can have lavender, rosemary, buckwheat
and clover honey, though the most common honey is a mix of many pollen. As a rule of thumb, dark honey is generally
higher in antibacterial and antioxidant properties than the lighter variety. One of them, Manuka is one of the most prized
in the world. It’s made in New Zealand and top quality
Manuka can sell for six pounds per gram. But the prize for most expensive honey goes
to Elvish honey, supremely rare and found in a deep Turkish cave, it goes for forty-one
pounds per gram. It’s reputed to have extraordinary health
benefits due to the rich mineral content in the cave and the medicinal plants in the surrounding
area. And the stuff that can make you fly? That’s the aptly named Mad Honey. Made from the poisonous rhododendron plant
in Turkey and the Himalayas, it has hallucinogenic and psychoactive properties. Nepalese honey-hunters scale vertical cliff
faces to harvest it, whilst enduring a hundred brutal bee stings. A Greek army got off their tits on Mad Honey
in 410 BC, when according to Xenophon's Anabasis, on an expedition into Persian territory they
came upon a village with lots of beehives and gorged on it. Some went mad, seemingly intoxicated, others
appeared on the point of death – they all fully recovered the following day and presumably
remembered they were there to stab Persians, not to get high. And the bad news for you honey lovers out
there is that while honey is effective when applied externally, its health benefits are
significantly less once digested – your stomach acid rapidly denatures most of the
beneficial molecules. It certainly won’t cure Covid and since
about 10% of honey contains botulism – the deadliest toxin known to man – a teaspoon
of it can kill an infant, but not an adult. So then, why did your mother shove a teaspoon
of honey down your throat when you had winter sniffles? Well, mother knows best and she might have
been on to something. Before it hits the stomach, honey coats your
throat and esophagus as it slips down, thus treating upper respiratory tract infections. Honey has consistently beaten off-the-shelf
cough suppressants and antihistamines to ease coughs and sniffles in a number of clinical
studies. Honey’s antibacterial properties may prove
to be humanity’s saviour in the decades to come. Every year antibiotic resistance becomes an
increasingly pressing issue – the WHO estimates antibiotic-resistant superbugs could kill
over 10 million per year by 2050. A pioneering team at the University of Birmingham
are working on a range of honey-based sprays, creams and a powder that will be able to treat
infections and kill bacteria, even those that fail to respond to modern antibiotics. The powder is particularly exciting, because
when mixed with water it creates a gel that can be used in warzones. Why is the team especially interested in re-purposing
honey and not developing new antibiotics instead? Because humans have been using it to treat
infections for over 8,000 years and, unlike modern medicine, bacteria has never been able
to evolve a resistance to it. It’s just as effective now as it was when
caveman first smeared it on his sore nipple. Furthermore, despite their best efforts, scientists
have been unable to engineer bacteria that is resistant to honey in the lab. This is because honey doesn’t work like
any other antibiotic. As already mentioned, honey is a supersaturated
solution, it has absorbed more sugar than should be possible for the volume of water
it contains. This means honey is absolutely craving more
water, and what does bacteria contain? That’s right, a good dose of water, therefore
when honey contacts a bacterium it rapidly sucks all the water out, neutralising it. Since this is a mechanical process, bacteria
has never found a way to evolve a natural defence against it, and there’s a good chance
it never will. Except for the botulism spores we mentioned
earlier which only exist in honey because they’re already dried out, so there’s
no water for the honey to extract. But pretty much nothing else stands a chance. And yes, it’s ability to exterminate bacteria
like a gloopy, sticky dalek is what gives honey its eternal shelf-life. So then, it turns out honey is magic after
all.
