Honey has a history as old as civilisation itself, first depicted in Stone Age cave paintings over 8,000 years ago.
Early humans gathered honey from wild hives, a practice eventually leading to the domestication of western honey bees in ancient Egypt around 2600 BC. Honey was highly valued across ancient cultures, used for food, medicine and religious offerings. Its versatility also gave rise to mead and other honey-based products. The invention of the movable comb hive by L L Langstroth in the 19th century enabled modern commercial beekeeping and large-scale honey production. But let’s not forget the real subject of this post as reflected in its title. Can dogs eat honey?

About honey

Honey really is one of nature’s true miracles. It’s a healthy and versatile natural sweetener produced by bees who collect nectar from flowers or secretions like honeydew produced by aphids. Once back at the hive, they refine these sugary substances through regurgitation and enzymatic magic. Water evaporation thickens the mixture and this results in the sticky golden goodness we know as honey. Remarkably, the honey bee is the only insect that produces food for humans.

The taste and colour of honey depends very much on the flowers the bees have visited. There’s an amazing spectrum from light and floral to dark and robust, using plants as varied as lavender and clover, hollyhock and hellebore.

Nutritional goodness of honey

Honey is about 80% sugar (mainly fructose and glucose). A standard tablespoon provides around 190 kilojoules (46 kilocalories) of energy. And while feeding a dog simple sugars is not normally a good thing, it’s the type of honey you feed that is the key to whether or not it is good for your canine pal.

Most commercially sold honey found in supermarkets has been highly processed. Pasteurised, heat treated and filtered. That’s no good to your dog at all. To give your dog the best that honey has to offer, you want raw, unprocessed honey which typically looks thick and milky as opposed to clear and runny.

Raw honey is packed with enzymes and nutrients, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. It offers your dog antimicrobial and antibacterial benefits. Pasteurised supermarket honey offers your dog simple sugars and little else!

Honey is a good source of vitamins A, B-complex, C, D, E and K. It’s also a good source of calcium, magnesium, potassium, manganese and copper. It is also naturally high in enzymes, antioxidants and flavonoids and can boost a dog’s energy levels, help with digestive problems and is useful in fighting allergies.

Health benefits of feeding a dog honey

Honey has been lauded for its health benefits for thousands of years. It’s rich in antioxidants and has potential antibacterial properties. Incredibly, archaeological finds have revealed edible honey that’s thousands of years old!

• Raw local honey contains pollen which can help desensitise dogs against environmental allergies
• Is a natural cough suppressant
• Soothes indigestion
• Helps heal topical wounds
• Manages diarrhoea
• Locally grown honey may help prevent seasonal allergies

Manuka honey

One type or raw honey stands head and shoulders above the rest. New Zealand’s manuka honey is made by bees from the nectar of the flowers of the manuka bush. Remarkably, Manuka honey has been proven to kill more than 250 strains of bacteria including MRSA, MSSA, VRE and helicobacter pylori.

How much honey to feed your dog

While there are no hard and fast rules relating to how much honey a dog can have, it is possible that too much honey could have an adverse effect.

A general guideline would be:
Up to 4.5kg (10lbs) – 1/4 teaspoon per day
4.4kg to 9kg (10 to 20lbs) – 1/2 teaspoon per day
9kg to 22kg (20 to 50lbs) – 1 teaspoon per day
22kg+ (50lbs+) – up to 2 teaspoons per day

Always start slowly with new foods to make sure your dog is happy with it.

Other bee products

Surprisingly perhaps, honey is just one of a number of functional superfoods produced by bees that dogs can benefit from. They can also eat and enjoy bee pollen, propolis and royal jelly. They can also benefit from beeswax, but not in their diet unfortunately!

Bee pollen:
Pollen is the powdery substance that contains the male reproductive cells of flowering plants. Its transference from one flower to another is the way that bees effect flowering plant fertilisation. Pollen acts as a food source for bees, and it is also known to scavenge free radicals which lead to cancer and age-related conditions such as canine cognitive dysfunction.

Propolis:
Propolis is the sticky resin of plants collected by bees and used to repair and maintain their hives. It is known to be a natural antibiotic and anti-bacterial agent.

Royal jelly:
Royal jelly is a honey bee secretion which combines digested pollen and raw honey. It is known to improve endurance and stamina and to alleviate the symptoms of depression and anxiety. It also has anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial, antioxidant and anti-tumour properties.

A human food that dogs can eat too

Scientists have proven that not only have dogs and human beings shared the same diet for at least 12,000 years, they have demonstrated that the digestive systems of both species simultaneously evolved to process and benefit from that shared diet. From those same foods. At the time of the First Agricultural Revolution, when man became less reliant on foraging and more dependent on farmed produce, the digestive tract of both species underwent exactly the same genetic adaptation to allow us and our dogs to process that more limited farmed diet. In other words, we know that without any shadow of a doubt, long before the beginning of recorded time, dogs and human beings were sharing exactly the same diet. Eating the same food.

So even if you prefer to call the food that we humans eat “human food” and the food that dogs eat “dog food”, the fact is that human beings and dogs began to form their enduring relationship at exactly the same time as the First Agricultural Revolution, and likely largely because of our shared ability to benefit from the same foodstuffs. Back then, the food that humans ate was not considered human food, any more than the food dogs ate (exactly the same food remember), was considered dog food. The food that dogs and humans shared, the food that helped cement the bond we continue to enjoy to this day, was simply known as “food.”

So while many today speak of honey as being human food, the fact is, when it was first cultivated thousands of years ago, honey would have been eaten by both human beings and their dogs. Along with all the other foodstuffs they would have shared, honey would simply have been considered “food”, food that both dogs and human beings could each eat, enjoy and benefit from.

So when you ask yourself, can dogs eat honey, can I feed my dog honey, is honey one of the safe human foods you can share with your dog, the answer is an unequivocal, yes. Dogs can eat honey because, just as is the case with we humans, it’s something they have always eaten!

Honey is not suitable for all dogs

1. Avoid giving honey to puppies whose immune systems have not yet fully developed.
2. If your dog is diabetic, do not feed honey without veterinary consultation.

For most dogs though, the answer to the question, can dogs eat honey, is a resounding yes!