With allergy season in full swing, social media has been abuzz with the idea that consuming local honey cures springtime allergy symptoms by desensitizing your immune system to local pollen. This idea is alluring — honey is a much sweeter deal when it comes to both your taste buds and your wallet, and its known medical properties add weight to this theory. But can we just assume this is true? 

There is no doubt that honey has played an extensive role in humanity’s medical record. Its versatility is exemplified in its use to both heal surgical wounds and treat the common cold, both applications that have persisted to this day from antiquity. Given its rich and well-documented history as a known antibiotic and anti-inflammatory agent, it seems intuitive that eating local honey is probably good for you. And it seems doubly intuitive to make the analytical jump to honey being a cure for springtime pollen-related wheezing.  

Unfortunately, the scientific evidence backing this theory is sparse: only two studies directly investigate the honey-allergy link. One is a small trial (40 people) that found eating large quantities of honey in addition to medication marginally improved allergic rhinitis in patients, while the second found that a cohort of individuals who substituted one spoon of honey a day for allergy medication did not experience significant relief.

Perhaps the most damning nail in the coffin of  the honey-pollen-allergy theory is the fact that  most people are not actually allergic to the floral, or ‘sticky’ pollen in honey. It requires bees and  other pollinators to spread it around, because it’s  generally too heavy to be airborne. Rather, wind blown pollen released by trees and weeds makes  up the bulk of your exposure, triggering sneezing  and wheezing.  

What about an indirect link between honey and allergy relief? In the context of gut bacteria, evidence points towards a correlation between low species diversity and increased allergies in adults. Honey has been shown to both promote good bacterial growth (as a prebiotic) and introduce beneficial species (as a probiotic), which could potentially result in less severe allergy symptoms.  

So, is supporting your local honey dealers good for the bees and your sneeze? The answer, like most things in science, is unclear. However, provided that you’re not allergic to honey, millennia of anecdotal and scientific evidence point to the conclusion  that honey is beneficial in a myriad of ways. Moreover, choosing to support your local honey farmers is an act of environmental preservation. By linking yourself to the pollination cycle as a consumer, you help preserve the symbiotic  relationship between local bees and the ecosystems  they support, nurturing both your body and the land that you live on.