Manuka: the Healing Honey

Manuka honey’s powerful properties can help combat infections, heal wounds, clear up skin conditions and give a daily energy boost.

Women's Weekly

The manuka is a small tree with aromatic leaves and is native to New Zealand and Tasmania. The honey is produced when bees pollinate the flowers of the bush.

Not all honey collected from the manuka tree (Leptospermum scoparium) has antibacterial properties. It is laboratory tested first to determine whether it is active.

The higher the activity, the higher the rating – and the price.

In Australia, the tree used to make manuka honey is called the jelly bush. Australian jelly bush honey has been found to share the same properties as manuka honey, according to researchers from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, with both possessing the high level of additional non-peroxide, antibacterial components, which are stronger than other hydrogen peroxide types of honey.