Every year I have people who return to us to buy our honey to alleviate their hayfever symptoms. I’ve read many articles that condone the use of honey and many that condemn it – it is all rather confusing.

I started thinking about hayfever the other day when I noticed that the Hazels suddenly seem to have catkins on them. I’m always pleased to see them at this time of the year as they are a great source of pollen for our bees. However, my friend that I was with was groaning as she is sensitive to Hazel pollen and it triggers her hayfever.

Thankfully I don’t suffer form hayfever, but from what I’ve read different people are sensitive to different species of pollen, from grasses to birch.

Honey bees collect pollen from many, many different flowers, this means that their honey will usually contain a rich selection of pollen grains. The pollen grains are so minute that it is impossible to see them floating about in the honey. The theory behind eating honey to stave of hayfever is that if you eat a small quantity of honey each day that contains the pollen that you are allergic to, then your body builds up a resistance to it. Then, when the flower that you are sensitive to does come out, your body is better able to cope.

From what I understand people should start taking their daily honey dose several months before the pollen that they are allergic to is flowering. This allows the body time to build up some immunity.

If this theory is true, then it is important to eat honey that is likely to contain the pollen that you are allergic to. There is no point in taking honey produced in Central London if you live next to an oil seed rape field that sets off your hayfever. There aren’t fields of rape being grown where the bees are foraging, so there won’t be any of that type of pollen in the honey.

Honey bees are said to travel up to about 5 miles to forage for food. You can imagine what a huge range of different pollen could be being brought back to their hives!

Shops usually choose to sell clear runny honey because apparently that’s what people prefer to buy. However, the process of heating and filtering under high pressures used to produce honey like this has the detrimental effect of removing the tiny pollen grains. This means that a lot of honey is not going to help with the hayfever issue.

We don’t heat our honey and do not use any kind of fine filtering. We don’t mix our honey from different hives. On our jars we always state which hive that the honey was collected from and the postcode where the hive is situated. Sometimes our honey is a little cloudy and sometimes the honey will set – but it is always delicious!  Who minds taking that kind of medicine?