- The golden potion for health and wellness
With advancements in science proving that naturally occurring elements could be more advantageous to one’s health, and lesser processed things we consume the better, society has started to progressively move towards consuming more and more natural foods.
With this new development, many have identified naturally occurring alternatives for various purposes, including health and wellness.
In utilising natural alternatives for food and also medicine, amongst these many discoveries, a notable finding has been the benefits of bee honey – specifically, raw bee honey. Raw bee honey, while available, is not just in abundance, especially the bee honey that is aged, as the older raw bee honey gets, the more benefits it develops.
In Sri Lanka, aged bee honey is available through RHS Bee Honey, an initiative based in Hasalaka in the Kandy District that has since expanded around the island and is currently preparing for exports.
We spoke to RHS Bee Honey Founder Sanju Perera, who shared with us that she first came across this concept of raw bee honey when her son got ill and it was recommended that she give him some honey. When she was looking for organic honey to give her son, she came across farmers in the Meemure area, basically those within the Minipe in the Central Province, who develop and age raw bee honey.
“Some of them even had bee honey that has been aged for 10-15 years. It is incredibly rare to find wild bee honey that has been aged for this long,” she shared.
Sanju shared that since she discovered these farmers, she decided to establish a link between them and the broader market, helping in packaging, marketing, and distribution. “The issue had been that they were not able to get the word out and also to reach retailers,” she said.
RHS Bee Honey currently offers a variety of raw honey options, but their more commercial products include their flavoured options such as honey mixed with cashew, cinnamon, ginger, and garlic.
She shared that the honey that is found in the Minipe area is incredibly pure and it is able to stand out because they do not use any fertilisers. The plants the bees obtain their nectar from is the purest you will find. She shared that the health benefits in this honey is limitless, pointing out that it is useful for simple things like healing wounds and burns, treating a cold or a cough, for acid reflux, or fighting off an infection and even more severe illnesses.
Because of the potency of wild bee honey, it is advised that children under the age of three don’t consume it, as it could be too intense of an effect on soft cells that a developing child’s body contains.
Sanju also noted that while they are currently preparing to expand their product range, when it comes to making their products available on a mass scale, there is a challenge because this is not a mass production, and it simply cannot be done in that way.
“It is an organic preparation. The process is set the way it is and therefore, we cannot supply for the demand, and we don’t prepare for supermarkets and such because if we were to do so, we would no longer be left with honey for those who may urgently need it,” she said.
If you wish to see for yourself the benefits of RHS Bee Honey, you can visit any exhibitions held at Kandy City Center (KCC). They also deliver islandwide via WhatsApp on 0778 190 281.
