What is honey for? Enjoyment, sheer pleasure. You can, of course, go the whole way with some people who believe it is an elixir of life - like the famous Vermont Dr Jarvis who wrote Folk Medicine, a book "that swept America" according to the blurb. He argued that bacteria cannot live in the presence of honey, for the potassium in honey withdraws from bacteria the moisture essential to their existence. And he quotes a bacteriologist of Colorado Agricultural College, at first a non-believer, who put honey to the test and was convinced of Jarvis's argument.
Jarvis gives nine telling points in favour of honey: "But for me the crowning glory of honey is its medicinal value. Being a medical man, I would naturally be interested in a substance which study and experimentation have convinced me is a help in living this life literally from the cradle to the grave." A doctor in Dublin, asked his opinion of honey, said it was sugar in a different form. No more.
Well, you don't have to go to the extremes of some continental enthusiasts who make even more ambitious claims for it than Dr Jarvis, but it is a versatile item of diet. To put in your coffee or unmilked tea, or in yoghurt, or over fruit salad; or just a couple of teaspoonfuls before going to bed. Said to help you rest, and also quoted as a mild laxative. Cooks use it in baking: biscuits or cakes, etc. Generally, it's just one of the good things of life. That's it.
First of this year's honey tasted came from Sean Cronin. His Irish Woodland Honey from Woodtown, Rathfarnham, surprised him in its quantity. He had feared the bad weather would have hit hard, but believes that his good crop came because the hawthorn, chestnut and sycamore were blossoming at the time of the good weather. He doesn't have it in sufficient quantity for commercial use, but The Gourmet Shop in Rathgar, Dublin, run by his brother Tom and himself, always has good honey along with all the other gourmet requirements, including good wine and cheese.
A friend, as well as relishing Irish honey, orders, direct from a part of France he knows, several varieties from very high upland valleys to Mediterranean scrub produce. And remember, bees are needed to pollinate fruit and other produce. "Honey bees", writes one authority, "are the only insects present in sufficient number in the Spring to carry out effective fertilisation of the blossoms".