Honey bees, on their endless quest to find sufficient pollen, propolis, nectar and water for their thriving hives, will only travel as far as they need to in order to locate these treasures, according to the Department of Energy. In other words, honey bees do not go sightseeing. Generally, bees travel in the range of 1 to 2 miles.
Hydrogen Peroxide Benefits
With a hive at the center of the bees' range, and 2 miles being the longest distance traveled from the hive, it is safe to say that a hive can produce honey from all the different flowers found in a 4 square mile range (2 miles in any direction). In honey making, this is an important consideration because it shows how difficult it is to find a mono-floral honey, or a honey made wholly or mostly from one flower. Manuka honey is a rare mono-floral honey. The bees that make it, harvest from the flowers of the manuka bush in New Zealand, which is also used to make tea tree oil, an essential oil that itself has antibacterial and healing properties.
When manuka honey is applied to a wound, an enzyme in the honey, called "glucose oxidase", is diluted by body fluid, setting off a reaction within the honey that produces hydrogen peroxide. As hydrogen peroxide is slowly released from the honey to the wound, it acts as an antiseptic, or antimicrobial agent.
Non-Peroxide Benefits
The hydrogen peroxide benefits of manuka honey are present, to a greater or lesser extent, in most other honeys. The greater benefit comes from UMF, or Unique Manuka Factor, an anti-bacterial property present uniquely in manuka honey. Dr. P. C. Molan of Honey Research Unit, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, has devoted decades to understanding the properties and benefits of manuka honey. He came up with UMF to describe the potency of manuka honey's non-peroxide benefits. Though, as of 2010, the exact "how UMF works" is not yet known, the fact that manuka honey delivers non-peroxide benefits has been extensively recorded.
In numerous studies, the enzyme, "catalase" was added to manuka honey to destroy hydrogen peroxide, after which the honey was applied to a variety of wounds. Regardless of the lack of hydrogen peroxide, manuka honey offered antiseptic benefits.
In 2000, K.L. Allen, G. Hutchinson and Dr. Molan presented the results of studies that indicated that manuka honey can be effective against the so-called drug-resistant "superbugs", MRSA (methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) and VRE (vancomycin resistant enterococci).
Wound Healing
Manuka honey has been used in numerous clinical studies of wound healing, according to the Waikato Honey Research Unit. A summary of these studies shows that manuka honey sterilizes wounds in 3 to 10 days, and that it acts as a barrier to invasive microbes so that the wound does not become re-infected. Further, manuka honey has been shown in clinical studies to help skin to regenerate and to encourage the rapid formation of normal tissue, as opposed to scarred tissue, after skin grafts.
As reported by Waikato Honey Research Unit, in a study of 59 patients with long-term (1 month to 2 years) non-responsive wound treatment by conventional means, manuka honey showed "remarkable improvement following topical application of honey" in 58 of the patients. The patients in this study suffered from gangrene, burns, and a variety of skin ulcers.
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