The best Manuka Honey for the highest pollen and beebread

If you’re a honey lover, you either enjoy it for its sweet taste, or because you know of its incredible wellness benefits, or both. The good thing about our honey is that it is exactly as you would find it in the hive, just minus the wax.

Steens Raw Manuka Honey is 100% raw and unpasteurized. We don’t use fine filters when harvesting our honey, and we have our very own unique way of extracting the honey from the honey frames.

Independent studies at an IANZ Accredited Commercial Laboratory have found that Steens® Honey has between 3 and 15 times more ­bio-available pollen (also called ­beebread) in every ­spoonful than the other major ­leading brands of Mānuka Honey, thanks to our unique, patented raw ­extraction and packing methods, invented by the Steens family, back in 1982 when they first started extracting Manuka Honey.

What’s so great about pollen?

Pollen is a complete wholefood in itself. This is what the bees use for sustenance in the hive, and it is often bought as a supplement on its own, to sprinkle over fruit or cereal for its unique health benefits and dense nutritional value. 

The problem with most store bought bee pollen, is that it is not bio-available. When something is not bio-available, it simply passes straight through your digestive system without many benefits to the body, because the pollen shell is so hard that it cannot be broken down inside our stomach.

Thankfully, the pollen found in Steens Raw Manuka Honey has gone through a  lactic acid fermentation process undertaken naturally by the bees inside the hive. This creates the product called ‘Bee Bread’. This fermentation process makes it bio-available not only for the bees but for us humans too, giving it prebiotic qualities, making it extremely beneficial for the gut and digestion and therefore overall immunity and wellbeing.

Bee Bread is one of the oldest superfoods known to humans, and contains a rich and diverse set of antioxidants, nutrients and proteins, providing your body with a powerful concoction of free-radical fighters. Combine this with the prebiotic properties of bee bread and you can see why a higher pollen and bee bread count in your honey is adding so much more vital benefits to your diet with just a small amount each day.

How does the pollen get into the hive?

When bees are our foraging in the blossoms, they pick up pollen particles on tiny hairs on their legs. That’s why sometimes you’ll see bright yellow blobs on the bee, because he has just come back from pollen hunting. When they get back to the hive, the pollen is combined with the nectar and special microbials that the bees add providing them with the beginnings of Beebread.

When you buy store bought pollen as a supplement, the pollen you are buying has been collected by humans through a process of creating such a small entrance for the bees to get into the hive, that they knock off a lot of the pollen particles they have collected This is then taken, machine processed and sold in jars. For this reason, the pollen is not nearly as bio-available, because it hasn’t been through the fermentation process in the hive. This makes it less accessible in the human body, and more difficult to absorb.

What is the difference between bee bread and pollen?

Pollen is a particle that is created by a plant, and is gathered by bees. Pollen particles are microscopic, and are covered in an incredibly hard outer shell that take a lot of enzyme activity to break down.

Inside the hive, the digestive enzymes of bees naturally contain lactic acid bacteria providing the lactic acid which is mixed with the pollen particles and therefore starts to break down the hard outer shell of the pollen. This is the only ways bees (and humans) can digest the pollen well enough to take advantage from the incredible nutrients pollen holds.

When the pollen has been broken down this way, and mixed with the lactic acid, along with the warm temperature inside the hive it becomes what is known as  ‘bee bread’, and also becomes completely digestible by bees and humans, to enable them to absorb all the vital properties the pollen particle holds.

What are the top 6 benefits of bee bread?

Protein: high in amino acids

Increases muscle mass and strength and is good for your bones, reduces food and sugar cravings and the desire for late-night snacking whilst boosting your metabolism and increasing your bodies fat burning abilities. Protein reduces appetite and hunger levels by providing your body with the energy it is craving, and it lowers Your Blood Pressure whilst helping to maintain weight loss.

Minerals: iron, cobalt, phosphorus, calcium, selenium and potassium

Minerals help maintain acid-base balance, to keep the body pH neutral. Minerals help regulate body processes, such as in enzyme systems. Minerals function in nerve impulse transmission and muscle contraction. Minerals help release energy from food.

B-group vitamins

As the building blocks of a healthy body, B vitamins have a direct impact on your energy levels, brain function, and cell metabolism. Vitamin B complex may help prevent infections and help support or promote cell health and growth of red blood cells.

Flavonoids

Flavonoids possess a number of medicinal benefits, including anticancer, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antiviral properties. They also have neuroprotective and cardio-protective effects. 

Plant phenols

In addition to their antioxidant activity, polyphenols have many other health benefits. Some studies strongly suggest that diets rich in polyphenols may offer protection against development of certain cancers, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Bioavailability:

Bee bread is at least 3 times more bio-available than regular flower or bee pollen. This increases the chances of your body taking in the necessary nutrients and helps you to stay healthy. 

• Prebiotics – thanks to the process of fermentation within the hive
• help keep the colon healthy, maintain blood sugar balance, and even affect brain neuroplasticity. Can also help with common digestive issues like bloating and constipation, increase mineral bioavailability, and even promote satiety and weight loss. Some studies even posit that prebiotics can be beneficial for stress-related behaviors.

When you’re looking for Manuka Honey as a functional food, the very best way to buy it is as a wholefood - that is as close to what is created in the hive as possible, so you can take advantage of all the incredible natural properties that come along with it. Most people when purchasing Manuka Honey look for the MGO (methylglyoxal) levels, and the UMF certification, but to make sure you are buying the very best Manuka Honey you can buy, you should also look for Manuka Honey that is 100% raw and unpasteurized, and extracted without using fine filters (and is full of highly nutritious beebread).

SHOP STEENS RAW MĀNUKA HONEY

*Analysis completed at IANZ Accredited Analytica Commercial Laboratories