There’s one thing stress-free about stepping right into a swarm of bees. I do know, I do know… however hear me out. The sound — a gradual, collective hum — envelops you want a weighted blanket. Just like the roar of the ocean, it is an auditory reminder that nature is highly effective. Bees are highly effective. And so is the stuff they make: honey.

Let’s rewind. I’m on the tippy-top of a hill on a distant island within the Marlborough Sounds, the northern shoreline of the South Island of New Zealand. The world is thought for its turquoise waters, its manufacturing of dry-yet-fruity sauvignon blanc, and — the explanation I’m clad in a beekeeping swimsuit and gloves — its abundance of mānuka timber. For about two to 6 weeks per 12 months, bees pollinate the flowers of those timber, kicking off the manufacturing of mānuka honey.

Mānuka Well being has invited me right here to stand up shut and private with the method. The corporate tends to roughly 21,000 hives throughout New Zealand, guaranteeing queen bees (the one sort able to laying eggs) are completely happy and wholesome, employee bees (who collect nectar and pollen to create honey) are thriving, and, ultimately, that the mānuka honey inside every comb is extracted with precision and care.

So why ship an Attract editor (and never one from, say, Nationwide Geographic) to witness this pure phenomena? As a result of there’s loads of proof that honey can profit your pores and skin — a lot in order that Mānuka Well being has created a skin-care vary along with its line of ingestible honey and propolis, a kind of resin additionally produced by bees.

In my decade-plus as a magnificence editor, I’ve noticed that there are solely a handful of issues all dermatologists appear to agree upon — and certainly one of them is that irritation is the foundation of all “evil.” It is a contributing issue within the growth of, properly, virtually each pores and skin situation you may consider, together with zits and hyperpigmentation. Honey can assist scale back irritation “as a result of it has an osmotic impact on the pores and skin — it could possibly draw out [excess fluid],” Kavita Mariwalla, MD, a board-certified dermatologist primarily based in West Islip, New York, has beforehand instructed Attract. “Honey can [also] be a chilled agent, so it additionally helps to scale back redness,” she provides.