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Honey Cappings? Yes Please!

February 21, 2012

Why am I including a post about honey in a beauty blog? I can remember my mom always serving challah bread and honey on the Jewish New Year, to symbolically sweeten the 12 months ahead, and she shared with me one of her favorite house warming gifts: bringing a pretty jar of honey to suggest the idea of ‘sweet things to come’ to a friends’ new home.

This being my fourth post on my brand new blog, I thought it was only fitting that I share something honey related with you to sweeten all that’s to come.

On a trip to a really cool store called Live Live in the East Village here in NYC, my friend Liz and I discovered a whole line of jarred honey-infused products called Bee Yummy. In addition to a number of incredible skin treatment products from the line, I left the store with a container of some really weird looking waxy stuff sitting atop of some really beautiful golden honey.

The very knowledgeable  guy working there told me that the weird looking waxy stuff was called honey cappings, and that it’s the part of the honey harvest that bee keepers usually keep for themselves, given its’ amazing health benefits and many uses. Luckily, he told me, they were able to find a bee keeper who was willing to sell it once a year during the months of May and June.

So what are honey cappings? I think most of us know that bees build honeycomb with beeswax, and then fill the cells of the comb with honey. Once they’ve reduced the moisture content to around 18%, (really? how do they know?) they cover the cells with wax (the cappings) in order to prevent atmospheric moisture from diluting the honey. AMAZING. I read on line that essentially honey cappings could be used to mummify a body, keeping skin in tact for centuries, which is why using skin treatments made with honey is such a good idea.

Liz and I excitedly went back to my apartment to taste the honey cappings and feel the magical effects for ourselves. We’d been told that some people spread it on hot toast, whereby the wax melts just like butter along with the honey. We decided to forego the bread and just scrape the cappings onto our spoons.

We learned that by themselves, we didn’t much like the taste or texture of the cappings. It’s a little like chewing gum, but with the texture of wax, and with next to no taste when eaten alone.

After Liz left I decided to try a spoonful of honey mixed with some of the cappings and found it to be a world better, and in fact, I’ve eaten some every day since.

Here’s why:

  1. Some people say it’s good for hay fever since it contains pollen, essentially building up your immune system by feeding you little doses of what you may be allergic to.
  2. It contains small amounts of numerous vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and antioxidants including: niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, potassium, and zinc. (Just as the color of honey varies, so does the content of the of the benefits listed above.)
  3. It has antimicrobial properties and speeds healing.
Sweet!