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Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey (2018)

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Re: Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey (2018)

#41

Post by jelliclesfarm »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #25
lukehutch wrote: post #7

I grew up in NZ and find it hilarious when I see a tub of manuka honey in a supermarket in the US. This is the most genius marketing ripoff of all time. Most honey you could buy in NZ back then was either clover honey or manuka honey, it cost about $3 for the same amount, and there was nothing special about manuka honey. Manuka is just teatree, by the way. And all honey has the same antimicrobial properties -- it has…

>The reason honey kills microbes is it has exceptionally low water content. Do you have a source for this? A simple search on scholar.google.com for "manuka" and "MRSA" studies in 2020 and there is a substantial amount of evidence showing its unique medical properties.

Honey is hydrophilic. Perhaps that has something to do with its topical medicinal quality.

Re: Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey (2018)

#43

Post by jelliclesfarm »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #40
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honey is food and cheap. And easily available. And natural. What’s not to love?

Concentrated sugar is unhealthy in all but small doses.

I think Manuka is also used topically.

Re: Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey (2018)

#44

Post by jelliclesfarm »

quixoticelixer- wrote: post #33
peterburkimsher wrote: post #21

I had an interesting chat with John McDermott at the IoT meetup in Auckland last week. He said that honey is one of the most difficult markets for IoT. What's so hard about it? Connectivity isn't great in NZ - there's no phone signal in the remote places where beehives are common. Artisan beekeepers don't care about analytics to increase their yield; they're just doing it for fun (sometimes after retiring from other…

Getting stolen is the only thing I could think of, temperature and hive humidity aren't usually problems, the beekeeper doesn't control those things, the bees do. Maybe there are a few other things it could be used for but i'm not sure what.

Hive theft has recently become an issue here in Ca.

CA being CA...hives used for pollination services are taxed differently than hives used for honey/orchard pollination. Insurance also treats them differently.

More: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/05/bee-thiev...

[..] “I couldn’t think. I kept messing up the count,” he told me, sitting at a friend’s kitchen table the next morning, shaking his head. He’d hardly slept. “Over half of them were gone, 160 boxes”—days before California’s almond bloom, the biggest and most lucrative pollination event in the world. “Those thieves stole about $70,000 from me,” he said, tallying the insects, equipment, and lost pollination rental fees.

Kuhnhenn, 39—tattooed, with a brown beard, and wearing a black “Right To Bear Arms” T-shirt and jeans—is a commercial beekeeper from Bantry, North Dakota. Like many others in his profession, he makes the bulk of his living from an annual pilgrimage to the Central Valley, where his bees help pollinate the state’s almond crop. In the off-season, back home on his ranch, Bulldog Honey Farms, he manufactures about 80 pounds of summer honey. Wintertime is almond season, and he’d been preparing for the bloom all year. His hives were ready to move into position in the almond orchards. Now was that time, and a bunch of his bees were gone.[..]

Re: Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey (2018)

#45

Post by spats1990 »

quixoticelixer- wrote: post #33
peterburkimsher wrote: post #21

I had an interesting chat with John McDermott at the IoT meetup in Auckland last week. He said that honey is one of the most difficult markets for IoT. What's so hard about it? Connectivity isn't great in NZ - there's no phone signal in the remote places where beehives are common. Artisan beekeepers don't care about analytics to increase their yield; they're just doing it for fun (sometimes after retiring from other…

Getting stolen is the only thing I could think of, temperature and hive humidity aren't usually problems, the beekeeper doesn't control those things, the bees do. Maybe there are a few other things it could be used for but i'm not sure what.

The uses I know of are temperature in order to indicate when the bees have started raising brood in late winter/early spring--warmer hive temp=broodraising--and hive scales, which could theoretically tell you when the bees are about to swarm and would allow you to track how much honey the bees are bringing in in real time. Neither of these are a decent value proposition for commercial beekeepers.

Re: Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey (2018)

#46

Post by canada_dry »

Scoundreller wrote: post #18
mkl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, manuka honey was always just ordinary honey in NZ! It's like this article is from an alternate reality or something.

Will trade manuka for maple syrup.

I've read that Canadian maple syrup is the cure for post-election-anxiety.

At least that's how I figure we should market it to our friends down south!

Re: Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey (2018)

#47

Post by quixoticelixer- »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #44
quixoticelixer- wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting stolen is the only thing I could think of, temperature and hive humidity aren't usually problems, the beekeeper doesn't control those things, the bees do. Maybe there are a few other things it could be used for but i'm not sure what.

Hive theft has recently become an issue here in Ca. CA being CA...hives used for pollination services are taxed differently than hives used for honey/orchard pollination. Insurance also treats them differently. More: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/05/bee-thiev... [..] “I couldn’t think. I kept messing up the count,” he told me, sitting at a friend’s kitchen table the next morning, shaking his head. H…

Theft is certainly a problem with Mānuka hives

Re: Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey (2018)

#48

Post by jz_ »

eightails wrote: post #27

I don't really understand the point of advertising the 'anti-microbial' properties. Antiseptic creams are far less expensive if you're applying it to wounds. Ingesting something for its anti-microbial properties seems a bit strange when there is plenty of research suggesting that having a healthy gut microbiome is beneficial[0]. People eat certain kinds of yoghurt for the very purpose of encouraging gut microbe activ…

What I don't get is how they are marketing their honey around containing higher amounts of something which has putatively negative qualities?

> Methylglyoxal, a highly reactive dicarbonyl compound, is inevitably formed as a by-product of glycolysis. Methylglyoxal is a major cell-permeant precursor of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs), which are associated with several pathologies including diabetes, aging and neurodegenerative diseases. In normal situations, cells are protected against methylglyoxal toxicity by different mechanisms and in particular the glyoxalase system, which represents the most important pathway for the detoxification of methylglyoxal. While the neurotoxic effects of methylglyoxal and AGEs are well characterized, our understanding the glyoxalase system in the brain is more scattered

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2015.0002...

Re: Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey (2018)

#49

Post by petre »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #21

I had an interesting chat with John McDermott at the IoT meetup in Auckland last week. He said that honey is one of the most difficult markets for IoT. What's so hard about it? Connectivity isn't great in NZ - there's no phone signal in the remote places where beehives are common. Artisan beekeepers don't care about analytics to increase their yield; they're just doing it for fun (sometimes after retiring from other…

Weren't cell towers and phones detrimental to bees' well being? LoRaWAN and SigFox should be okay though since they only send low bitrate, low energy payloads.

Re: Manuka, the World’s Most Coveted Honey (2018)

#50

Post by petre »

quixoticelixer- wrote: post #33
peterburkimsher wrote: post #21

I had an interesting chat with John McDermott at the IoT meetup in Auckland last week. He said that honey is one of the most difficult markets for IoT. What's so hard about it? Connectivity isn't great in NZ - there's no phone signal in the remote places where beehives are common. Artisan beekeepers don't care about analytics to increase their yield; they're just doing it for fun (sometimes after retiring from other…

Getting stolen is the only thing I could think of, temperature and hive humidity aren't usually problems, the beekeeper doesn't control those things, the bees do. Maybe there are a few other things it could be used for but i'm not sure what.

One could have alarms for low/high temp/RH to alert the beekeper when the colony is threatened. Also maybe a weight sensor so they know how much honey there is in the hive. I'm not a beekeper so not entirely sure what they'd want. Anti theft beacons can be easily disabled, especially LoRaWAN and SigFox which need a bigger antenna.
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