>>Bees pollinate the manuka plant the resultant honey has chemicals that are not found in regular honey.<<
I’m a beekeeper and I’m not believing the Manuka honey claim.
#1. ALL raw honey is naturally antibacterial, antimicrobial, and antifungal. Because of this, it never spoils. Honey found in Pharaoh’s tombs was crystallized, but edible and could be liquified by low temp heating. It was used and stored for more than a source of food. It was used to dress wounds, made into elixirs, used in embalming, cosmetics, etc. Of course they didn’t understand the bacteria or microbes that caused gangrene or caused a dead body to putrify. They just learned that honey would prevent it.
#2. Only the honeybee knows what variety of plant nectar and pollen they have collected that day. More importantly, the beekeeper has a difficult time limiting the bees to a single plant source. Unless the bees are provided with only one plant source within about a 2 mile radius, there’s no way to honestly claim it is 100% specialty honey and doesn’t contain nectar from other plants/trees/weeds that are interspersed withe the main crop (i.e. manuka, clover, blackberry, maple etc.).
3. Honeybees cannot survive on a single source of nectar and pollen. All plants produce pollen and nectar for a very short period of time. When the manuka or the clover is done blooming they must move on to another variety of plant that is in bloom to produce enough honey to feed their hive and to store enough honey to get them through months when there is no nectar or pollen to collect.
The idea of honey being exclusively made from a single plant source is simply not possible. We’re not sure how it happens, but research has shown that honeybees will set out at the beginning of the day to collect a specific nectar and they do that to the exclusion of all other plants in their flight path. What’s interesting is that some bees may collect only clover nectar, while others are tasked with collecting dandelion nectar, and still others are sent to collect nectar from tomato plants. All that nectar comes back and is co-mingled to produce honey. During a major nectar flow of, say, manuka, most of the bees may be collecting that nectar, but not all of them.
Beekeeping is a fascinating hobby that still holds some mysteries. One thing that isn’t a mystery, however, is that no beekeeper can claim the honey from their bees is 100% of a single plant variety.
The Manuka honey people are not claiming 100% from the manuka plant. They actually give tested percentages of the compound that is dreived from the manuka plant, indicating the bees get nectar from other sources. Price is dictated by the %.
I also raised bees at one time. The majority of my honey came from blackberries. Probably a smidgeon of tansy and lotus major. I found it superior in taste to predominantly clover honey. One twenty year old gallon jug never crystalized and still retained the wonderful taste.