Manuka Honey.

Many years ago, the New Zealand honey marketing people paid for research into the medicinal properties of their un-saleable tea tree honey. It didn’t sell because it has what is known as “an acquired taste.” As the Egyptians discovered more than 4,000 years ago, honey does have some seemingly magical properties, particularly when used to treat persistent open wounds.
I was at a talk recently on the subject by an equine vet, and fellow bee keeper, Patrick Pollock, who has been achieving remarkable results in third world countries but has a day job at Glasgow University and is researching the matter. He is working on the thesis that, because the anti-bacterial properties of honey function as a preservative, they have been evolved to combat local pathogens. So we shouldn’t be using manuka honey as a dressing for Scottish wounds, we should be using Scottish honey. I believe he is the same bee keeper who had his own honey put through the tests that manuka honey has to pass; lo and behold, his bog standard Portobello honey passed with flying colours – a fact that was reported in the (Scottish) national press.
I was somewhat disgusted to see this little display in our local chemist’s while trying to find out when Mrs TD’s medication might arrive (we’ve been waiting for two weeks for it - so far). The health benefits of any honey stop at open wound treatment and, at four times the price of Scottish artisan honey, manuka honey is very poor value; this is not being sold for wound treatment, neither is it pure manuka honey – the blend is unspecified.