Does honey support seasonal allergies?

People tell me all the time that they only get local honey because it’s “supposed” to help with allergies. Is that really true?

I don’t turn folks away from buying local honey, but when they tell me their reason is because of allergies, I encourage them to consider the science. It’s a fairly ubiquitous belief in our culture that local honey can help tamper seasonal allergies. The notion is so pervasive that we just assume it’s true. The beliefs that I commonly hear revolve around the honey including inclusions and particles of pollen, then the consumer of the honey is exposed to the pollen on a small scale, which helps their body recognize and respond to the allergens when seasonal pollen flows happen. It sounds logical. I heard a similar notion when I went on a foraging walk a few years ago. The leader walked us through how to harvest pine pollen. She explained that you can add the pollen to smoothies, and ingesting it helps with seasonal allergies. The idea of small exposures over time is essentially the process of immunotherapy.

I often hear folks will have a teaspoon of honey daily as a prophylactic effort to support their immune system. Some only do that seasonally. Some year-round. Others only start a routine when they start to feel sick. It’s hard to know whether people who maintain a honey routine also practice other health-focused habits, which could collectively help support their allergies.

Whether a local honey’s seasonal allergy support is valid stems on the answers to a few questions: What exactly is “local” honey? Are other properties in honey—beyond its “local” sourcing responsible for providing some seasonal allergy relief? Is honey part of someone’s routine diet, or are they consuming it seasonally? Is the honey raw? What research validates the allergy-supporting property in honey?

How do we define “local” honey?

Having a shared definition of local honey can help put the science into perspective. Is local honey that which is harvested in your town, your county, your state, your region of the country? Honey bees don’t see bureaucratic boundaries when they forage. We think of a honey bees’ forage radius as 1-to-3 miles, sometimes 5, and some reports show up to 8 miles. This doesn’t necessarily mean the bees are foraging in a clean circle from their hive. Perhaps they’re primarily foraging a few miles to the west, and you live several miles to the east with different flora that impact your allergies. Depending on your region, the foraging options could be fairly similar in one part of the state as the other, which would imply that honeys harvested in different places could provide similar support.

Many a beekeeper can attest to how different honey harvests look and taste from just a neighboring property—and sometimes one hive that stands just a few feet from another might bring in a different honey. Some colonies excel in honey production, others in propolis, wax, brood, and so on. I might inspect one colony and see varying shades of pollen, but in one next to it I find one color. Since honey bees practice flower fidelity—they keep returning to a source until depleting it—one colony might out-compete another in foraging pollen.

On the topic of pollen, some arguments claim that bees gather honey from floral sources and not grasses, the latter of which is a primary cause for seasonal allergies. According to WebMD, “Pollen from weeds, trees, and grasses is the leading cause of seasonal allergies.” This would mean that honey wouldn’t contain the right types of pollen to help support that immunotherapy effect. My own personal observations conflict: In the spring throughout our region, seeing maple pollen in the hives is the first sign that the season is starting. Also, I watch honey bees forage the grass pollen around our yard. We only mow twice per year and our grasses get long seed heads that the bees annually forage.

Honey support of health

Thinking of honey’s allergy support in isolation reminds me of a John Muir quote, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” Honey is antimicrobial and contains vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, and it’s an alternative to over-the-counter cough medicine. How can we confidently say that it’s not a combination of these traits that create the anti-allergy affect?

Raw and filtered honey

Raw honey (the standard varies by jurisdiction, but generally raw honey is not heated higher than 110 degrees F) contains medicinal properties. Heating honey over 104 degrees F destroys beneficial enzymes. Filtering honey also removes pollen and wax particles, to a degree. Given the theory of how honey could support allergies, the honey would have to be raw and unfiltered (or minimally filtered).

Research about honey and seasonal allergies

All of the earlier questions may be moot points. A little over 20 years ago a clinical trial showed that consuming local, unfiltered honey “had no significant effect” on allergy symptoms. A key piece of information about this research is that it only involved three dozen people. That isn’t a significant sampling. Another study, about a decade later, showed more allergy improvement among honey consumers after the trial ended. Key pieces to consider about this research, the study included 40 participants, only lasted 2 months, and all participants took an antihistamine (a version of Claritin). Would a year-round study help to clarify honey’s impact, and how do we know that it’s not the combination of honey with an antihistamine that provided the allergy support?

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America wraps this up so succinctly: “Honey does not help with seasonal allergies.”

How does this change how you feel about honey?