Time to change our tune?

[masterBK]

The stuff is everywhere. They are bound to collect particles that have settled in flowers by mistake

Most of the pollen in honey comes from pollen that drops etc from the anthers into the nectaries rather than from pollen brought back to the hive in the corbiculi. One way pollen from wind pollinated flowers ends up in honey is by way of honeydew excreted by aphids and scale insects and collected by honeybees. Honeydew contains all sorts of stuff that gets stuck in the sticky stuff including fungal spores, algae strands, oxalate crystals, sooty particles as well as pollen from grasses and wind pollinated trees. Most honey samples will have some honeydew in them even if in small amounts.

 

[pargyle]

The Placebo Effect is however very well documented. Possibly the only reliable way to tell whether it actually works would be for you to take a dose of something identical to honey in appearance and taste and compare the results to taking genuine honey, without you actually knowing which is which. Ideally the same test is done across a sufficiently large cohort of hay fever sufferers to ensure the results are statistically significant in case an improvement in your condition for example is actually down to licking the hand-carved wooden spoon you use to take the honey rather than the stainless steel spoon that everyone else uses.

James

To be honest ... I have no desire to convince anyone whether honey is helpful to their hay fever - you can rabbit on as long as you like about placebo effects, lack of scientific evidence, blind tests, control panels etc. I know it works for me and I'm sure others feel the same ...judging by the number of people who buy my honey with the same experience ...

 

[JamezF]

To be honest ... I have no desire to convince anyone whether honey is helpful to their hay fever - you can rabbit on as long as you like about placebo effects, lack of scientific evidence, blind tests, control panels etc. I know it works for me and I'm sure others feel the same ...judging by the number of people who buy my honey with the same experience ...

That's just a long-winded way of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "La la la, I'm not listening". But that's fine by me, because if anyone ever asks me whether eating my honey will help with their hay fever, I can quite honestly answer that whilst the law does not allow me to make medical claims about my honey, I know of someone who is absolutely convinced that eating a spoonful of honey every day works for him

James