Australia's Bungawalbin Valley region provides our bees with some of the cleanest and greenest bush in the world to forage from. Australian tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia), along with a wide variety of native Australian botanical species such as jelly bush (Leptospermum), eucalyptus and other seasonal wildflowers grow in abundance throughout the region.
This incredible environment allows us to produce honey that is superior in both taste and quality; honey that is completely raw, unprocessed, unheated and unpasteurized; retaining the naturally occurring raw honey properties, just as the bees intended!
The Meluka Australia range
Here’s a few ways we love to use Meluka’s honey range:
Wound aid - Meluka’s tea tree honey is infused with our signature tea tree extract, delivering the signature anti-bacterial and anti-microbial properties of tea tree. Apply it to burns, cuts or abrasions and cover appropriately to provide anti-bacterial protection and to stop air getting to the site for faster healing.
Sore throat soother and cold symptom remedy - Soothe sore throat and cough and cold symptoms by taking a spoonful of Meluka’s tea tree honey or combining a tablespoon in a glass of warm water.
Antioxidant boost - Supplements can have a place in our diets but nothing compares to getting antioxidants from the food we eat. High quality honey is rich in antioxidant power, and in particular, our tea tree honey contains major bioactive anti-oxidants and phenolic compounds with a concentration of flavanols, other phenols and glycosides. Remember not to heat your tea tree honey above 40°C as this may destroy the naturally occurring bacteria that provide all of these healthy honey benefits.
A sweetener - Your Meluka native wildflower honey is a delicious sweetener for tea or coffee, smoothies and salad dressings, as well as a great sugar substitute in baking. Wow your friends with a cheeseboard drizzled with Meluka’s native wildflower honey for the perfect salty and sweet combination.
Tap into the power of plant based whole foods - Hemp seeds are known for being high in protein and rich in essential fatty acids. Our bodies don’t produce them, so we need to get them from the food we eat - these are the good fats we want to be consuming! For something a little different, why not try our unique hemp seed honey as a drizzle over your Sunday pancakes. Its a delish smoothie sweetener or ingredient for your raw bliss balls.
Aid your digestive health - Stay hydrated with citrus and honey. Do you have trouble drinking water during the day or maybe don’t enjoy the taste of plain water? We know that being properly hydrated is essential for our digestive health. We love a little morning ritual of preparing our water bottle with a few slices of lemon, lime or orange and a teaspoon of wildflower or tea tree honey.
A few of the not so common uses of honey
Just when you thought you couldn’t find any more uses for this liquid gold, here are some other not so common ways honey is used:
Gardening - It’s said that if you’re growing a plant from cuttings, dipping them in a mixture of 2 tablespoons of raw honey dissolved into 2 cups of boiled and cooled water before planting, may support root growth. It’s down to raw honey’s anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties that assist to prevent your plant cuttings from possible infection and provide a healthy root growing environment.
Skin and hair treatment - Natural beauty care, yes please! Use your native wildflower or tea tree honey as an ingredient in your homemade face masks, scrubs or hair care treatments - no nasty chemicals here.
Honey may be a sleep solution - It’s reported that honey can promote relaxation and help you enjoy a peaceful night sleep. A slight rise in insulin allows the tryptophan compound that makes us sleepy enter our brains more easily.
Honey cocktails - Fancy a bee’s knees cocktail? Make your own honey syrup using equal parts of Meluka’s native wildflower honey and water in a small saucepan. Boil, then turn down to a simmer and stir until completely dissolved.
Honey and bee facts
Here at Meluka, we love bees! Here’s 10 sweet facts about bees and honey.
- Honey is said to have an eternal shelf life. It was reported that Egyptian tombs that are thousands of years old still contain edible honey!
- Just one beehive can make anywhere from 30-100 pounds of honey annually. A bee must collect nectar from around 2 million flowers and fly over 55,000 miles to produce a single pound of honey. This equals a lifetime’s worth of work for about 800 bees.
- Bees have five eyes. Two hairy eyes (that detect wind) on either side of their face and three ‘simple’ eyes on top of their head to detect light.
- In winter, bees survive on honey. After working in the summer, bees ensure they have enough food in their hives to survive through winter. They occupy their time by surrounding themselves with the queen and shivering their bodies, which gives the hive warmth.
- Honey goes a long way for bees. On average, a honey bee produces 1/12 teaspoon of honey over its lifetime, meaning two tablespoons would be enough to fuel a bee’s whole flight around the world.
- Not all bees produce honey. Out of 20,000 species, only a small percentage make honey, which is known as Apis mellifera - one of only seven known honey bee species.
- Honey is excellent for the economy and environment, pollinating about $20 billion worth of U.S. crops a year; a third of all food eaten by Americans is derived from honey bee pollination, either directly or indirectly. Some crops pollinated are cucumbers, almonds, melons, apricots, cherries, pears, apples, avocados, kiwi and blueberries.
- Bees are incredible little creatures. As well as honey, they provide us with royal jelly, beeswax and bee pollen.
- Bees communicate their movements. Forager bees have incredible ways of communicating food sources through their ‘waggle dance’. It is believed that the duration of the waggle dance indicates the distances to the flower source, and the more vigorous the waggle, indicates the abundance of the nectar source. The angel of the waggle to the sun is also said to represent the direction the bees need to fly to find the flower!
- Honey varies in color and flavor, depending on the source of the nectar. Meluka’s honey range has distinct flavors from the nectar the bees in our area pollinate from, and this will vary slightly each season, depending on what is flowering seasonally.
See what our happy customers have said about Meluka Australia’s honey range
Here are some reviewers from Amazon who give our honey five stars.
Sean
5.0 out of 5 stars
Australian Tea Tree Honey is Amazing!
“I use tea tree oil in other products because of the many health benefits, and this Australian Tea Tree honey was recommended by a friend. The Tea Tree Honey has already helped with my digestive tract and shown other health benefits, and it tastes fantastic! I highly recommend it!!!”
Melinda
5.0 out of 5 stars
“Delicious honey with a slight eucalyptus flavor.”
“I’m afraid I’m a little bit of a honey fanatic. I buy it everywhere. I’m very happy with this one. The taste is mild, slightly eucalyptus. I had a cold the week it arrived and it was excellent in tea for my sore throat. I’ll buy more."
D. Inman
5.0 out of 5 stars
“The taste is so pure!”
“This product is awesome! I love the way it tastes and the journey that it takes to make this beautiful product. It’s truly the best honey I’ve ever tried. I just ordered the other two products that they make. I can’t wait to try them as well!”
Chris Collins
5.0 out of 5 stars
“I was curious what this would be like. Very tasty!”
“We have gone through a few jars of the Raw honey from these guys and love it. We wanted to try the other kinds of honey in the line-up. The Tea Tree honey is very nice, and the family loves it.”
Try it for yourself
Don’t take our word for it; try Meluka Australia’s honey for yourself! Shop online at our website or via Amazon here.
Yours, the Meluka family
Do you have any questions, queries or comments? If yes, we’d love to hear from you. Your feedback is important to us so if you’d like to leave us a review after you’ve tried our unique and great tasting honey range for yourself, we’d love to know what you think.