I love you, honey

I am so impressed with honey's ability to aid healing.

I used it on a rotting chicken after crop surgery. Saved the chicken.

I put generous amounts of it into my Super Duper Homebuilt Horse Salve. It has cured practically everything.

Most recently Coopslave burned herself and with the help of honey seems to be on the way to recovery and her career as a swimsuit model.

Newest use of honey here at our place: Thrush.

Horse has a case of hoof thrush. Goggled all the home remedies. Used bleach for a while with little improvement. Diluted honey in water until it would move through a spray bottle. Have been using that for a few days. Guess what? Stench is greatly diminished. Things are improving, and it was a pretty bad case.

So, have a thrushy horse? Diluted honey on the hoof will help and the good part is a horse can't lick the bottom of his feet. The honey will stay there.

I thought this was going to be a post about how much you loved your husband. lol

Me too, but in a sarcastic sort of way.

.

Any time I have an ouchie or boo-boo around here I treat with a home made mix of honey and propolis. I have a good friend that has an apiary and was fortunate enough to buy an ounce of it. A little goes a long way and it takes a long time to grate, pulverize and mix the stuff together, but it is a miracle cure. It is painfully expensive, but stores easily and has no expiration.

I used to buy the most incredible propolis cream - it was very expensive but meant for cold sores - it was fantastic after the cold sore had burst or subsided (did nothing to prevent cold sore forming). Skin would heal within days and all the pain and soreness would evaporate. Now alas I cannot find it.

I did find when I had bees that when I took the honey off and spun it in the extractor I'd have arms covered with honey all day and it was just wonderful for my skin.

I miss my bees.

My Super Duper All Purpose Wonder Salve, which I make, has honey and propolis and a few other ingredients that I can't tell you because they are a closely guarded secret.

Authentic thought this was about me loving my husband? And Heda thought it was about me loving my husband in a sarcastic way? Ladies. Please.

we have a little bottle of cream that has manuka honey in it, use it on everything.  It is highly coveted because it was super expensive but a little bit goes a very long way.  Its the first thing we reach for with burns, my son used it on his atheletes foot.   My father in law in England uses straight manuka honey (imported from NZ or Ausie) on his leg ulcers for skin regeneration and I believe it acts like a natural antibiotic.  That's a really expensive jar of honey, I'm certain it is the same as regular manuka honey but this jar has "medical" written on it, guess the pharma companies have to get in on everything.  He was recommended it by a practice nurse when all the orthodox medicines failed to make a difference.  Really a magic substance indeed.  Honey of all types must be good but maybe there is something extra that the manuka offers.  We have a little bottle of manuka essential oil (think I bought it in Walmart, called Tea-tree oil) that can be used as an antiseptic.  In NZ people use it to treat head lice.  Potent stuff!

Honey, I thought you were talking to me, Uno  

Manuka honey basically comes from tea tree trees, if I am not mistaken, from New Zealand, or is it Australia, or both, hence the cost. When I kept bees back on the coast, we had thought about how we could grow a tea tree (why when I type that it just sounds weird and I am not spelling it correctly). Not positive, could google it, would someone please????? I am too lazy to do that. Tea tree oil, (gads is teatree one word, spelling it correctly, blick) is a most incredible healing agent. Picture nectar gathered from the tree, converted to honey, powerful, powerful, powerful. That is the expense. The tree does not grow just everywhere, like so many of the nectar sources that bees use to make honey.

Yep, Bowker, I have the same type of honey, infused with propolis. Only my propolis is not ground, it just sits in little tiny chunks suspended in the honey. The honey I have was from back on the coast, the floral gatherings during certain times of the summer made honey that never crystalized. This is still liquid form. I think the main floral source at that time was the agastache (hyssop officinalis), I had many, many, many shrubs (and they were like 3 feet tall by same width) that bloomed most of the summer and bees were nuts on this. Think that was the nectar that was used for non-crystalizing honey, not positive, but think so. Anyways, that is just another thing. I have pounds of propolis in the freezer that I had gathered from the bee colonies. I spent an entire summer one year, scraping propolis from the hive parts. It would drip down the size of the colony boxes, very slowly, but that too I would gather. Oh those days of life among the bees. Sure do miss it too, maybe one day, one fine day, will have a good many colonies again. Had 10 of them, not a huge number, but well enough to keep me very busy.

Uno, you are so onto something when you delved into making honey products, you are knowledge seeking woman, and you do yourself well. (I could give you more propolis if you would like).

Bowker, I have never powdered propolis, but seems to me in my training that we were taught to freeze it and then pulverize (before it gets warm, otherwise, sticky goo). I have a bottle of propolis that sits on my windowsill. Ever want to take a walk in a forest on a hot day? Just open the bottle, smell, and you are right there, the resins from the coniferous trees, deciduous trees, all coming into the nostrils, lovely. And oh, I also have a blob of propolis that is just a blob. Sits there. I love how when it is cold it is hard as a rock, but when I pick it up and warm it in my hands, that becomes a soft, pliable piece of heavenly scented "stuff". And my hands have the aroma of what the air smells like when I walk through pine trees, those kinds of scents, in the hot summer day. Oh boy, what have I done? gone from thinking that Uno was talking to me, when she said "I love you, honey" to a walk in that pine forest on a warm summer day....memories, oh memories are made of these. With that, wishes for a beautiful day for us all, CynthiaM.

Honey, my friend! Burn looks good because of you.
Neighbour used to have bees and see still gets unpasteurised honey from one of her friends. Made a big difference. Will start using it again, if hubby doesn't eat it all before we need it again!!!

CynthiaM you are correct about Manuka coming from both Aus and NZ.  Where I grew up I used to ride all over the neighbors farms on my horse, often in their back paddocks they had it growing wild, called it "scrub" (gorse gets lumped in to that bracket as well) and I used to think they thought it was an inconvenience because it was taking up pasture space.  I used to love the smell on a hot heady day, pass through pockets of still air with bees and cicada's going nuts, no cars or people . . . just me and the horse and the teatree smells.  the wood is coveted as firewood, burns real hot and just the best in a smoker  -  my mouth is watering at the thought of my Dad's home smoked snapper or kahawai (like a large mackerel I guess).  

I think you can get commercially packaged seeds.  If you want to grow small plants that could winter over indoors and be put outside in a planter during the summer that would be cool.  I might try it.  Down in the parts of NZ where it gets cooler in the winter there is a strain called Kanuka and it grows way taller and bigger, think it could tolerate a little more cold.  Incidentally, there is an online shop for crafty people where you can open your own shop and also buy materials for your crafts as well as sell what you make or sell on, maybe even eggs?  It is called Etsy.  I have bought heirloom seeds on that site, it is international.   Might look for Manuka seeds if I get going on it.  

Think it is Tea Tree.  Guess it was used to make a type of tea.  Definitely a medicinal plant.  Don't know if the type in Aus is exactly the same as the one from NZ.  Maybe there are more potent strains that can be used for honey harvesting?  Always boggled my mind about how someone can say for sure that their honey was harvested from bees who gathered pollen from a specific plant.  How do you stop them from ranging where ever they want?  Cripes, these days I almost cry if I see a bee in my garden, think I saw two this year and about a gazillion wasps (they discovered my strawb's and that is a fight I was not willing to take on this year).   By the way, how do I take section of someones post and put it into a box?  Have accidentally done it before but can't figure it out now :-(.


"Manuka honey basically comes from tea tree trees, if I am not mistaken, from New Zealand, or is it Australia, or both, hence the cost.  When I kept bees back on the coast, we had thought about how we could grow a tea tree (why when I type that it just sounds weird and I am not spelling it correctly).  Not positive, could google it, would someone please????? I am too lazy to do that.  Tea tree oil, (gads is teatree one word, spelling it correctly, blick) is a most incredible healing agent.  Picture nectar gathered from the tree, converted to honey, powerful, powerful, powerful.  That is the expense.  The tree does not grow just everywhere, like so many of the nectar sources that bees use to make honey."

I found this

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Geri

Magdelan wrote:
I think you can get commercially packaged seeds.  If you want to grow small plants that could winter over indoors and be put outside in a planter during the summer that would be cool. ."

If you find out where to buy seeds please let me know.
Geri

Hi Geri

I just did a look on google with the search words "buy Manuka seeds." Cause I'm a newbie here I can't post links (just tried, my effort was rejected) but look for a website for sandmountainherbs

And if you put Manuka seeds into an ebay search you can buy seeds there.  One I see says frost tolerant.  I don't think that will stretch as far as two feet of snow for four months which is what I have but they would surely grow in a pot plant that can get moved around or if you had a greenhouse.  Some folks not too far from me have a greenhouse that is heated with the use of a boiler stove.  Call that a wetback in NZ but it is on/in your stove inside the house, think you call it a water jacket here.  Theirs is outside, all on its lonesome in it's own little house, maybe 30 feet from the g. house.  Wish I had one of those, greens for us and the chooks all winter!  We're at 3300 feet here and they are probably the same.  The listing I looked at on ebay had some good info about the plant, medicinal qualities etc. worth a look.

Is manuka the same as mellaluca (spelling?) I always thought mellaluca was tea tree oil. I had never heard of manuka before Magdelan wrote about it.

hi Uno, Manuka is the Maori word (people who were in NZ before Captain Cook arrived) for the large shrub known by most people as Teatree. I am not sure if it is the same as malleluca. Will have to google that. I'd be pretty darned lost without google! I wonder if Ausies have a different name too.