Herbal Honeys & Electuaries

Honey is the oldest easily accessible natural sugar. Human use of honey is depicted in stone age tablets 8000 years ago. Long before human beings learned to tap trees such as maple and palm for their sap, or to process corn, cane, or beets to make sugar, the bees shared in their sugar gift of honey.

Medicinal use of honey is depicted in Sumerian tablets dating back 4000 years as a drug and ointment. The ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans employed honey for wounds and diseases of the gut. But what exactly is honey?

“Honey is the nectar of the flowers of plants, gathered by the bee and stored in its stomach for transport to the hive. Nectar begins with glucose being produced by the plant. The plant makes glucose by combining carbon dioxide gas and water in its leaves through the use of chlorophyll and sunlight (photosynthesis). Then part of the glucose is converted into fructose, and all of it together is combined into sucrose. This is circulated throughout the plant to produce energy for growth. Some of this sucrose (along with other compounds) is diverted to the plants’ flowers to coax nectar gatherers into cross-pollinating them.

Ignoring the other plant compounds, nectar is primarily sucrose, a disaccharide--that is, it is a double-molecule sugar, made from one fructose molecule and one glucose molecule linked together. The bee’s stomach enzymes take the sucrose molecule and break it apart into glucose and fructose. Glucose is slightly less sweet than sucrose (white sugar), and fructose is sweeter. Because fructose is so much sweeter than glucose, it takes fewer calories of fructose to achieve the same level of sweetening produced by the other sugars. In the hive, the bee regurgitates the nectar into the wax cells of the comb… The nectar is moved from cell to cell to facilitate drying. Eventually large numbers of bees band together, and by fanning their wings, perform the final evaporation to thicken the nectar into what we call honey, which is about 80 percent solids and 20 percent liquid. Unlike sucrose, fructose and glucose in combination and at such a concentration are very stable. The fructose is the most stable, being nearly impossible to crystallize. When honey does crystalline, it is the glucose you see--the remaining liquid is fructose. Fructose helps keep the honey liquid for extended periods of time.

Ancient honeys were from a profusion of wildflowers, whatever grew locally. It was exceedingly uncommon for honey to be gathered from a single species of plant, such as the alfalfa or clover honeys of today, unless that plant species existed in great abundance (as heather does). As such, the honeys of antiquity generally possessed the essence of a multitude of wild plants--all of them medicinal. Honeybees find a great attraction to many strongly medicinal plants--vitex, jojoba, elder, toadflax, balsam root, echinacea, valerian, dandelion, wild geranium--in fact, almost any flowering medicinal herb, as well as the more commonly known alfalfas and clovers. The nectar from a multitude of medicinal plants is present in any wildflower honey mix. That some of the power of the plant from which it is collected remains in the honey can be seen from the fact that honeys made from poisonous plants will poison people who eat them. Charles Millspaugh in 1892 commented that the honey of Trebisond, produced from the Persian Rhododendron ponticum, is poisonous, as is honey produced from Azalea pontica.

Ancient records have attributed at least one defeat of Roman soldiers to eating poisonous honey the night before a battle. Even today, beekeepers are warned to avoid allowing their bees to collect nectar from plants known to produce poisonous honey. It is amazing that it has not been recognized that the concentrated nectar of medicinal plants also holds within it the concentrated medicinal power of the plants from which it is collected. But this concentration of medicinal essence explains, in part, the healing power long attributed to honey and mead. However, in addition to the plants’ own medicinal qualities, the plant nectars are subtly altered, in ways that modern science has been unable to explain, by their brief transport in the bees’ digestive system. Before regurgitation, the nectars combine in unique ways with the bees’ digestive enzymes to produce new compounds.”

(Stephen Buhner, Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, p. 36-38)

In more modern studies, honey has been shown to contain antimicrobial and antiviral properties. Like water, honey is a polar solvent and does a relatively good job extracting most herbs. Although due to the already high presence of solid compounds, it is my feeling that honey is already quite 'full' and might not be able to accept as much of the medicinal compounds into it as water might. This is why I tend to use honey more in electuary form than as an herbal honey where herbs are infused into the honey and strained off. Electuaries allow herbs to be carried without straining.

Additionally, honey acts as a preservative and can last a very long time when stored in a cool, dark place with minimal temperature fluctuation.

Internally, honey has been found to be anti-inflammatory to chronically irritated tissues, especially in the digestive tract. And then there is the folkloric suggestion of consuming local honey, which contains trace amounts of local pollen, as a way of introducing these pollens in trace amounts to mediate one’s allergic response.

The healing property of honey as a vulnerary (an agent for wound care) is related to its antibacterial activity and ability to maintain a moist wound condition (which is conducive to healing for some, not all wounds). The high viscosity of honey also helps to create a protective barrier for optimum healing.

You can use fresh or dried herbs to make infused honeys.

In the apothecary, you can infuse herbs into honey for adding to tea, add honey to tinctures to turn them into elixirs, and use infused honey or electuaries for wound and skin care.

As I said earlier, I tend to use honey more as an herb delivery system for people who can’t use alcohol, or for less palatable herbs, and as a preservative. My thought here is that there is so much going on in honey already that how much more could possibly be extracted into it? This is just my intuitive interpretation and may not be scientifically sound, but this is also why I often combine honey with vinegar extractions.

Most importantly, honey is often mixed with vinegar for some amazing preparations, including Oxymels, Shrubs, and Switchels. For now, let's just focus on Herbal Honeys and Electuaries.

Making Herbal Honeys

Herbal Honeys are honeys that have had herbs infused into them and then strained off.

How to make an Herbal Honey

1. Combine herbs with honey in a double boiler and apply gentle heat–making sure honey doesn't exceed 100ºF–for 1-3 hours to infuse the herbs into the honey.
2. While the honey is still warm, strain the herbs out of the honey and bottle.

Using this method, heat will destroy some beneficial enzymes in the honey, but the heated method also provides optimum extraction of the herbs by piercing the cell walls and making all the virtues of the herbs very bioavailable.

You can also let the herbs infuse into the honey without added heat.

I tend to mix my powdered herbs and honey in a mason jar and leave in a warm place in the summer, or near my radiator, so gentle heat is applied without destroying any beneficial enzymes in the honey.

If using raw honey, the honey often hardens up, especially in cooler weather. You can warm your honey up in a warm water bath to get it moving before you pour the honey over the herbs.

Steep for a week or a moon cycle, it’s up to you.

Making Electuaries

Electuaries utilize honey as an herbal 'carrier', so the final product ends up being more like a paste rather than the viscous liquid we are familiar with. In electuaries, the herbs are not strained off and stay in the honey.

How to make an Electuary

1. Blend finely chopped or powdered herbs into honey to form a thick paste (covering herbs entirely with honey). You can allow the herbs to infuse into the honey for a deeper flavor, or eat right away, since we aren’t straining off the herbs and you will be ingesting the entire herb.

Depending on the herbs you use, you can add your herbal honey or electuary to tea, toast, baking recipes, or as a face mask.

Honey is also often used as the sweetening agent in syrups in lieu of processed white sugar.

Honey Poultice

For minor burns, applying honey topically in a thin layer to the affected area and wrapping it to avoid a sticky mess works wonders.