Humans and bees

A cave painting discovered at the Cueva de la Araña, "the cave of the spider", near Valencia in Spain depicts a female figure harvesting honey. She is hanging from the top of a tree with one hand and holding a woven basket to collect the honey with the other. This representation is the oldest known evidence of human interest in bees and the honey they produce. It is thought to date from some 10,000 years ago

Other representations dating from the Mesolithic (12,000 to 6,500 years ago) can be found in the Sahara, on the island of Borneo, in Australia, India and China. According to some prehistorians, the bee and the dog would have been "domesticated" by humans since this period. The human taste for honey is logically much older. It is certainly the same for the interest in honey as a medicinal substance.
Symbolism of honey
Honey has often been held up as a symbol of life, abundance, purity and wisdom. Many ancient traditions show that honey was associated with the rites that accompanied birth and death.
In ancient Egyptian myths, honey was born from the tears of the sun god Ra. The Egyptians, who practiced beekeeping as early as 2400 B.C., used honey as an offering to deities. During embalming, honey, wax and propolis were used to preserve the body. In secular life, honey was used as food and sweetener in the preparation of breads and cakes, as a basis for the production of medicines, and as beauty care.

According to Greek myths, honey was given to men by Dionysus. The God Zeus was sometimes called "the bee man" in reference to his childhood during which he was fed goat’s milk and honey. The first beekeeper was Aristaeus, the son of Apollo and Cyrene. Born in Africa, he learned the cultivation of the olive tree and beekeeping from the Nymphs. He then taught the rudiments of beekeeping to the inhabitants of the island of Céos. This is why Aristaeus and the bees appear on various Greek coins. The Greek goddess Artemis also had the bee as a symbol.

As in Egypt, honey was used as a gift to the gods of Olympus and played an essential role in funeral rites. To be transported, the body of Alexander the Great was immersed in a coffin filled with honey of Sicily (honey of Ibla), the most prized at the time.
Like the Egyptians and Greeks, the Romans practiced the offering of honey to the gods. It was a sacred product and the priestesses of the goddess of the harvest, Ceres, whose daughter was named Mellita, were called bees. Honey was offered to the deified ancestors by pouring it on the flame of the altar hearth with wine and milk. The Romans considered honey to be among the favorite foods of the dead. They frequently embalmed the deceased in honey.
In Jewish and later Christian traditions, the Promised Land is a "land flowing with milk and honey". It is much more than a symbol of sweetness and pleasure: it also evokes wisdom, knowledge and truth. In the Muslim tradition too, rivers of honey flow in paradise...
In Africa, Rwanda was also described by ancient poets as the land of milk and honey.
In France, the bee was one of the symbols of the power of kings. Its servitude to the queen and its hard work symbolized obedience and an ideal of social organization. The bee was also associated with wealth, war, and victory as shown in the painting representing Louis XII entering Genoa, in 1499.

Honey as a medicinal material

As early as 2700 BC, Mesopotamian clay tablets mention honey as a medicine. Assyrian medicinal texts mention the use of honey in friction.
A thousand years later, the "papyrus of Ebers" or "Book of preparation of medicines for all the parts of the human body" mentions more than 500 preparations based on honey to treat wounds, and certain diseases of the digestive tract, kidneys, or eyes. These preparations were in the form of pills, ointments, decoctions, bandages, plasters, eyewashes.

In ancient times, honey was, along with milk and wine, the basis of most remedies around the Mediterranean. Honey was used to treat wounds and intestinal diseases by the ancient Assyrians as well as by the Egyptians, then the Greeks and Romans. Honey was applied to the skin for its softening, regenerating, nourishing and hydrating properties.

Hippocrates (460-377 BC) prescribed honey to fight fever. He also recommended it to facilitate the healing of ulcers and purulent wounds, to treat hemorrhoids. He considered that honey cooked with cabbage cured effectively colic and dysentery.
For the "spiritual father" of the western medicine, the use of honey led to the greatest age and to the maintenance of the existence in all its vigor. In his Treatise on ailments, he wrote: "Wine and honey are wonderfully appropriate for man if in health as in sickness, they are administered with purpose and just measure, according to the individual constitution." In this he echoed the statements of the Greek philosophers Democritus and Pythagoras who had claimed that their exceptional longevity was due to their regular consumption of honey.

Nikandros of Colophon, born in 135 BC, gives formulas for honey-based poison antidotes called "theriacs".
Dioscorides, a Greek physician, pharmacologist and botanist, born between 20 and 40 and died around 90, who accompanied the armies of the Roman emperor Nero as a surgeon, wrote De Materia Medica around the year 77, which served as a reference until the 15th century. In this work, in which nearly 600 plants and 1000 drugs are described, Dioscorides indicates that honey can be used as a treatment for stomach diseases, purulent wounds, hemorrhoids and as a treatment for coughs.

Claudius Galen, born in Pergamon in Asia Minor in 129 and died around 201, advocated honey to fight tissue inflammation.
During the Arab-Muslim expansion in the Middle Ages, the doctors of this civilization will be the heirs and transmitters of the ancient medical thought. Honey, which is mentioned in the Koran as a drink with curative effect, will continue to be the basis of many medicinal preparations.

In the "Book of Food and Medicine" Abû Marwân Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar) praises the virtues of honey: "Honey is an important element in the health regime and in the treatment of diseases; it is better to prepare with honey the syrup that one takes to unblock the viscera. This is the case of the electuaries (soft pharmaceutical preparation made of powders incorporated in honey, in a syrup) and the theriacs (antidotes) that the ancients used only with honey". The book highlights the dual use of honey in Arab medicine. The noble substance is recommended to the healthy to preserve the balance of their health and to the sick for their therapeutic treatment with electuaries and theriacs containing honey.

Honey is then a basic ingredient of the pharmacopoeia; whether the recipes of electuaries are modest or enriched with many substances, the presence of honey is a constant rarely transgressed.

Here are some of the simplest recipes handed down by Arab-Muslim physicians:
Ibn al-Diazzâr, in the collection entitled The Book of the Medicine of the Poor, writes that "for the treatment of dog bites, take crushed onion with honey"
Against rabid dog bites, "The Treatise on Poisons" of Ibn Maymûn (Maimonides) prescribes the application on the bite of a preparation of "bitter almond kneaded with honey until the consistency of a plaster"; or: "Hulled almond, walnut, salt, onion crushed together with honey in equal parts until the consistency of a cataplasm..."
The "diatessaron theriac" or "poor man’s theriac", made up of four simples combined with honey, was a popular medicine recommended by Arab-Muslim physicians and after them by those of the Christian West. It was prepared from myrrh, hulled laurel berries, gentian root and aristolochia root. Ibn Maymun (Maimonides) indicates that "one kneads all these substances taken in equal parts with honey which one will have made skim, in triple quantity of all these substances taken together".

This recipe was to last. About this theriac of the poor, François Pierre Chaumeton quoting Cadet de Gassicourt wrote several centuries later in the dictionary of medical sciences published in 1822 that it is used "in spasms and epileptic attacks; it is considered as stomachic, emmenagogue and diaphoretic".

Collection of Latin translations of several works written by the two famous Arab-Andalusian physicians of the 12th century: Avenzoar (died 1162), and Averroes (1126-1198).

The "Great Theriacs" composed with a much higher number of ingredients were also all honey-based.
The Arabic medical literature of the Middle Ages includes at least two treatises exclusively devoted to honey. One of them is written by Muhammad ibn Sa’id al-Tamimi; it is a part of the book, Al-Murshid "The Guide to the Basic Principles of Nutrition and the Properties of Simple Medicines". The other one written by Avenzoar is entitled "The Book of Food and Medicine".

The medicinal use of honey remained important during the Renaissance, when apothecaries drew on recipes from Antiquity and Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine.

The preparations did not change much over the centuries. In the 19th century, there were electuaries (a pasty galenic form administered orally), mellites (honey-based syrups), and oxymels (a pharmaceutical preparation made from water, honey and vinegar). Therapeutically, we always find the same indications: laxatives, detersive, aperitive, pectoral, purgative, and cicatrizing.

One of the major uses of honey that has long persisted is in wound care. In the Middle Ages, honey was used for the realization of bandages without preliminary disinfection of the wounds. Napoleon’s armies carried honey in their campaigns in order to treat the wounded soldiers; honey was also used a lot to accelerate the healing of the wounds of the soldiers of the First and Second World War. The Germans also combined it with cod liver oil in the treatment of ulcers, burns, fistulas and boils.

It is only with the development of new synthetic products and their inscription in the official pharmacopoeias, that honey and its virtues were neglected and forgotten, in the second half of the XXth century. This is perhaps only a short parenthesis, because the study of the medicinal properties of honey has been the object of a renewed interest for some decades. The analysis of the international scientific literary production highlights this renewed interest with more than 10.000 referenced articles with the growth of the number of publications since the end of the 1990s

Honey in Indian Ayurvedic medicine

The ancient Indian Vedic civilization that developed Ayurvedic medicine considered "Madhu", honey, as one of the most remarkable gifts of nature to mankind.
Traditionally, according to Ayurvedic texts, honey is a boon for those with weak digestion, to treat irritating coughs, to keep teeth and gums healthy. It has also been indicated for centuries for the treatment of insomnia, skin disorders (such as wounds and burns), heart pain and palpitations, all lung imbalances, anemia and various eye conditions. Honey is considered "Yogavahi" because it strengthens the body and increases the potency of other medicines when combined. Honey is considered one of the five foods of longevity. Consuming honey and ghee together is said to promote and restore energy to the body. However, the consumption of honey is not recommended for people suffering from Pitta imbalances, which manifest as hyperacidity and skin rashes.

Ayurveda does not consider all types of honey as equivalent. Eight types of honey are thus distinguished:

– Makshikam produced by large blue bees, is considered "very light and dry". This honey helps to treat Vata and Kapha disorders, such as liver diseases (jaundice, hepatitis), hemorrhoids, cough, asthma, tuberculosis and eye diseases.
– Bhraamaram produced by small bees, is very sticky, translucent white. This honey is used in the treatment of blood vomiting, urinary tract disorders and digestive problems.
– Kshoudram made by medium-sized brown bees is considered by Ayurvedic practitioners as "light and cold". This honey is used to dissolve the kapha dosha, which governs the structural integrity of the body and in the treatment of diabetes
– Pauthikam collected from the nectar of poisonous flowers by small bees that live in the hollows of old trees. This honey is said to also create a burning sensation in the chest and increase the dosha vata - which is a type of energy that governs all movements. It is used in the treatment of diabetes, urinary tract infections and against tumors.
– Chathram, produced by yellow and brown bees found in the Himalayan forests, is considered "heavy and cold". This honey is recommended to treat worm infestations, blood vomiting, gout, indigestion and diabetes. It is also considered a very nourishing honey.
– Aardhyam produced by a yellow bee is said to be effective in curing eye diseases, cough and anemia. But some people say that this honey can cause arthritis.
– Ouddalakam made by a small brown bee that lives in ant hills. This honey is astringent but very good for treating the throat and improving voice modulation. Increases taste and swarasudhi. Considered as a detoxifying agent in cases of poisoning, and in the treatment of skin diseases and leprosy.
– Daalam considered as "dry" is said to improve the digestive system and reduce vomiting, help in the treatment of cough, and diabetes.

Honey in traditional Chinese medicine

In traditional Chinese medicine, honey (Feng Mi) is considered a tonic of Yin and Qi: it strengthens stamina, supports muscles, moistens sore throats, fights colds and flus, heals wounds, facilitates the digestion of herbal prescriptions, and is also used to make herbal tablets and pills.

In addition, traditional Chinese medicine considers honey to be neutral, i.e., generally not affecting the balance of the body and the balance between Yin and Yang.

According to the "five elements" theory of Chinese medicine, the taste of ingredients is a determining factor of their action in the body. Sweet ingredients like honey tend to slow down acute reactions and detoxify the body. They also have a tonic effect as they replenish Qi and blood.

According to Chinese tradition, the taste of ingredients also determines which organs and meridians they target. For example, honey is said to target the stomach, large intestine and lung. In Chinese medicine, the stomach is responsible for receiving and maturing ingested food and liquids. It is also responsible for carrying the digested elements down to the small intestine. The large intestine receives the "impure" parts of the digested food from the small intestine, absorbs the remaining fluids and excretes the rest as feces. In addition to providing respiration, the lungs are considered a key element in the chain of production of Qi and body fluids that nourish the body.