Can Honey Help With Seasonal Allergies?
I don’t know about you, but the fresh air and warm sunshine that spring brings is like a breath of fresh air for my winter worn self. And with the weather having that cold rainy snap that we experienced in the last week or two, it had me wondering where spring went!
As a farmer, you pay a lot of attention to the weather. It dictates when you can plant, when you can put chickens on pasture, when you can make hay, and also when you can get bees!
Last week my dad got his nuc of bees for the year. Isn’t that a fun word, nuc? A nuc refers to an established colony of bees, with at least 10,000 honey bees and 1 queen bee.
I personally don’t deal too much with the bees, always just a little nervous about getting swarmed and all stung up. But that does not deter dad, and I am thankful for that because of the benefits the bees provide for the farm.
The big one, pollination. Since we don’t treat our pastures with any chemicals or fertilizers, we get a lot of flowering forages growing out there. Having an army of 10,000 bees flying from plant to plant pollinating helps ensure a further level of hardiness to our pastures.
And then of course we get to reap the benefits of the bees labor, harvesting honey for ourselves. And this is not just any honey, this is raw honey created from our own backyard, full of enzymes and immune boosting properties.
We only take what is excess, leaving plenty enough for the bees to make it through the winter to the following spring.
Our goal is to one day sell the honey here on the farm, but we are still in the learning process yet and only have been able to harvest enough for ourselves.
That’s why we turn to Cybee’s Honey for the honey we do sell at the farm. They are located right here in Jarrettsville MD, and produce a wonderfully flavored raw wildflower honey. So delicious!
Did you know that eating local honey has been shown to help relieve seasonal allergy symptoms?
The idea is that the bees are collecting pollen from allergens (flowers, trees and greens), these allergens are then ingested via the honey, exposing your immune system to them in a non-confrontational manner, and thus building your immunity to them.
The neat thing is this only works with local raw honey. Local because it does you no good to be exposed to allergens from say Florida, and raw because you preserve the enzymes and allergens in their natural state.
Want a fun and easy recipe for this tasty raw honey? Try making this melopita. They call it the greek cheese cake, it’s just 5 ingredients, including honey and ricotta cheese. It’s certainly a favorite around the farm.