Fynbos Honey

Written by Dr Arien van der Merwe

and

Stephni van der Merwe, my daughter and PhD Candidate, University of Cape Town

Bees flutter from flower to flower thereby collecting pollen and nectar from a wide variety of seasonal flowering Fynbos plants. Their honey is filled with health enhancing benefits for us!

Bees collect the specific honey from the local Fynbos, preferably far from cultivated farmland and pesticides, in remote Fynbos areas. No chemicals and ‘medicine’ should be fed to bees – therefore completely organic Fynbos honey is best, with of course, no irradiation involved any step of the way to your obtaining the bottles of pure goodness and bliss!

Fynbos honey varies greatly in colour, flavour and consistency depending on the kind of blossom from which the bees have gathered their nectar. The honey should be filtered as raw honey the traditional way, using only a cheesecloth to obtain ‘pure’ unadulterated honey. The honey should also be badger friendly.

When honey is filtered, it should never be heated above 40°C to avoid damage to the many natural ingredients that contain the high levels of the healing properties of honey.

Fynbos honey has to be to warmed slightly to run more easily when cheesecloth is used for filtering, to remove the wax from the honey.

‘Pure’ means raw: collected, non-irradiated, filtered through cheesecloth, with temperature no higher than 40° and directly into clean, sterilised glass bottles then sealed and lids tightened.

Health benefits of raw honey

Raw honey has been a valued natural product in traditional medicine for thousands of years. It has hundreds of varieties with the flavour and nutritional content depending on the flower species that the bees visited.

Honey is the energy source for bees during the cold winter months, when there aren’t many flowers to forage nectar from. It is filled with nutrients and is high in healthy sugars, making it the ideal energy source for bees, who require substantial energy to constantly flap those tiny wings.

The nectar is stored in the honeycomb, where it starts to concentrate into honey, whose properties make it difficult for microbes and fungi to grow.

Raw honey that is harvested directly from the beehive, has numerous health benefits to humans, because it contains a variety of nutrients, energy or kilojoules, antioxidants and has both anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, a necessity to deter unwanted microbes and fungi in the hive.

Humans can benefit from these properties, because we also need to deter unwanted visitors in our bodies. Indeed, humans use it for wound healing and after serious burns even in hospital, because honey is so good at killing harmful bacteria and fungi as well as being anti-inflammatory.

Research has even shown that honey can kill bacteria such as Escherichia coli that cause wound infections and food poisoning.

Furthermore, its antioxidant properties may help reduce oxidative stress (caused by free radicals from abnormal oxygen species) that causes many chronic health conditions, such as cancer and other chronic diseases.

Another renowned health benefit of honey is its ability to relieve coughing. A teaspoon of raw honey can relieve a cough even better than over the counter medicines.

The latest benefit that humans have discovered, is that honey can be antiviral as well. 

It is therefore an all-round perfect blend of health benefits to humans, especially in the flu and cold season when our bodies need a bit of extra support.

Because the nutritional value of honey depends on the flowers that the bees foraged, particular honeys may have particular health benefits. For instance, buchu honey, created from a Fynbos plant species which is widely used to make tea and various other medicinal products, could have the same benefits that the plant has.

Buchu is known as a miracle herb in traditional medicine. Buchu honey also has antifungal, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, just like other honey. Therefore, it can be used as a natural antibiotic (with none of the side effects). Buchu is used as a remedy for stomach problems, when taken as a tincture. It is also particularly useful for kidney and urinary tract diseases, as well as symptomatic relief of arthritis and inflammation. These properties of Buchu may be present in the honey that bees make from the flowers.

Raw honey of any kind is a must-have household medicine – truly ‘food as medicine’ as Hippocrates said!