Health Benefits of Organic Honey

[natalie]

While it is a known fact that honey is extremely beneficial for our health, organic honey or raw honey is even more beneficial. Combining honey with other ingredients can cause some health benefits like:

[B]Honey & Ginger:[/B] Combining honey with ginger helps in treating respiratory problems & in easy transmission of benefits of ginger into the body.

[B]Honey & Milk:[/B] The combination of honey & milk has for long been used for skin care & stamina development.

[ryan]

organic honey comes from hives that have not been fumigated with antibiotics or pesticides.

Most bee keepers use a lot of chemicals in an attempt to keep the various mites and beetles that have invaded American hives over the past 25 years.

organic bee keepers do not use any chemicals and tend to use smaller hive cell sizes (what the bees lay eggs into and store the honey in) as well as mechanical methods to keep the pests under control. I believe organic apiculture is the smallest sector of organic agriculture-there just are not many organic bee keepers out there.

never confuse raw honey for organic honey, almost all honey is raw.

[kymsolaris]

Honey can also be used to make a wonderful beverage called honey wine or mead. Here is an article about it:

Mead makes a comeback

By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS [email]mdrahos@record-eagle.com[/email]

TRAVERSE CITY — That buzz you're hearing? It might be about mead.

The ancient beverage — also known as "honey wine" — is enjoying a renaissance of sorts in northern Michigan, where everyone from home brewers to wineries to restaurants are serving it up.

It's part of the region's larger artisinal food movement, said Kirk Jones of Sleeping Bear Farms in Beulah.

"People here are making hand-crafted cheeses and nut butters, beers and breads," Jones, a honey farmer who has been making home mead for about 25 years, said. "And people are expanding their awareness of foods and beverages exponentially, it seems."

Made with honey, yeast, water and flavorings — from fruit to herbs and ****es — mead is a lot like wine, only without the grapes.

"It can be dry to sweet, it can have fruit notes from different fruit, it can have different floral notes from different honey, different complexities from aging in oak, and different wine treatments," said Jones, who has tried them all. "It's a very pleasant beverage. Good mead is really yummy."

Adding fruit or ****es to the drink not only enhances the flavor but speeds up the aging process, said Phil Anderson, owner of Diversions, which sells wine and beermaking supplies and equipment.

"The only thing about mead is typically for it to taste really good it takes a longer aging time than other kinds of wine," said Anderson, who often dispenses advice and recipes to customers keen to make the drink. "It's best if it can age a year. Which isn't to say you can't drink it earlier. It has an interesting flavor when it first ferments; I liken it to almost a medicinal taste. When it ages out, it becomes a more interesting flavor."

Common flavorings include ginger, lemons, limes, apples, raspberries and, in the case of Longview Winery's mead, cherries from neighbor Elmer Kalchik's orchards.

Longview winemaker Alan Eaker began making fruit mead (called "melomels" in mead-speak) in 2005 and was the first to offer it commercially in Leelanau County. The specialty wine has won several awards, including a gold in the 2007 International Eastern Wine Competition and a silver in the 2007 Finger Lakes International.

The mead sells for $19 a bottle and is a favorite of visitors to Longview's Cedar tasting room, especially on waffles and as an after-dinner drink.

"We sell it lickety-split around here," Eaker said. "It has great appeal, and more and more people are coming into the tasting room and saying, 'I make mead. I'd like to try it.'"

The drink can be easier on the palate for people who haven't yet cultivated a taste for grape wine.

"It's the difference between tea with honey and tea not with honey," Eaker said. Or, as Sam Porter of Porterhouse Productions puts it, "It's a bridge between great beer and great wine."

Porterhouse will feature Michigan meads, including locally-made Acoustic Draft Mead — also available at area restaurants — at its 2010 TC Summer Microbrew & Music Festival. The event takes place Aug. 27 and 28 on the Grand Traverse Commons lawn.

"You don't have to wear a Viking hat to drink mead, but it does seem old world," Porter said. "It's fun. I think people love to be merry and every now and then try something new. And it's great to have a picnic with mead and change the evening a little bit."

For Jones, part of the fun is experimenting with honeys.

"Different varieties of honey make different varieties of meads," he said. Right now farm staff are harvesting tupelo honey from Florida Panhandle tupelo gum trees, and are getting ready to bottle up a batch of mead made with last year's tupelo honey.

Back when Jones began making mead, it was all by trial and error.

"At first some were good and some were bad. I didn't have the techniques to make good mead consistently. But we had enough good to continue making it every year," he said.

Now he and wife Sharon craft the family limit of 200 gallons a year with friend Nate Rose, who collaborated on the Star Thistle Mead that recently won a silver medal in the 2010 Mazer Cup International Competition.

Besides drinking the beverage with meals, sharing it at music festivals and giving it away to family, friends and farmers, the Jones' are hoping to distribute it more widely. They're applying for a wine license that would allow them to establish Benzie County's first commercial meadery.

[zoeharry]

When organic consumed in warm water helps digest fats. Honey and cinnamon can help in many areas, including relief of bladder infections, arthritis, indigestion and bad breath. Honey also cure rheumatism, cold and sterile.

[jonyboyy]

I just wish I could handle the taste of honey .. yuckkk

[Josh44]

I'm with you, Jony. I just flat-out do not like the taste of honey. I don't know what it is about it, but I don't like it. Maybe if I put it in some hot tea?

[Greensky]

What's wrong with the taste? I think honey is sweet and delicious, or I have missed something here? Anyway, honey has antibiotic properties, so it can be used for external use, for instance to cure acne.

[solarpowered]

Organic honey is just like any other organic food, supposedly it's not treated in any way, but unless they are wild bees than I doubt it's 100% organic.

[malinamartis]

Honey is a best Way to Get a Healthy Energy Boost. It is the ultimate moisturizer for skin and hair..

[Manuka Honey Benefits]

Coming From New Zealand I am particulary interested in Manuka Honey Benefits. Recent years of study have shown the many wonderful benefits of this native honey on both internal and external heath conditions. I use Manuka for general health by taking a spoonful each morning. If you buy Manuka honey always ensure you check the umf rating which should be 16+