Other Names
Cab, honig, kab, ksandra (Sanskrit), mel, mella, miel

Honey is a substance produced by the domestic honeybee (Apis mellifica) and by wild bees (Melipona spp., Trigona spp.) from the nectar and pollen of various plants. “Honey is perhaps the only predigested food that humans know” (Root 1996, 127).

Honey has been used to make mead since the Stone Age. The fact that honey can be toxic and/or psychoactive – in other words, inebriating – has long been known and has been demonstrated throughout the world (Palmer-Jones 1965). Honey also has a long history of use as a healing remedy or a “heavenly medicine.” In Hippocratic medicine, honey was used as “a kind of psychopharmacological agent to treat depression and melancholia, and as a geriatric medicine.” It was also used as an antidote for opium overdoses (Uccusic 1987, 38 f.; see Papaver somniferum).

There are three categories of plants that are associated with toxic honey: 1) plants whose nectar or pollen kills bees before they can transform it into honey (e.g. locoweed [Astralagus lentiginosus], Veratrum californicum, Vernonia spp.); 2) plants whose nectar is harmless to bees but when turned into honey becomes toxic/inebriating to humans (e.g. oleander [Nerium oleander], thorn apple [Datura spp.]. angel’s trumpet [Brugmansia spp.], mountain laurel [Kalmia spp.], false jasmine [Gelsemium sempervirens], Euphorbia marginata, Serjania lethalis); and 3) known poisonous plants that are harmless to bees and yield edible and often exquisite honey (e.g., Rhustoxicodendron, Metopium toxiferum, Jatropha curcas, Baccharis halimifolia, Ricinus communis) (Morton 1964, 415).

Xenophon (ca. 430-355 B.C.E.) reported in his Anabis that soldiers became inebriated and poisoned by the honey that had been produced from the Pontic rhododendron (Rhododendron ponticum L.) and apparently from a red-flowering oleander (Nerium oleander L.: cf. Rätsch 1995, 267 f.) (Roth et al. 1994, 615). “In modern terms, they ‘got high.’ . . . This condition did not last long amongst the Greeks and quickly abated” (Rüdiger 1974, 93). The toxicological literature refers to this Pontic (Turkish) honey as “mad honey” or “toxic honey of Asia Minor” (Fühner 1943, 203). This inebriating honey was well known in ancient times (Krause 1926; Plugge 1891), and it may have been involved with the Dionysian frenzies:

In the district on the Pontus, among the people of the Sanni, there is a kind of honey that is known as maenomenon [“mad maker”] because of the insanity it induces. It is thought that this is caused by the flowers of the oleanders [Rhododendron], which abound in the woods. (Pliny 21.77)

In ancient times, it was believed that oleander first came from the land of Colchis (on the Black Sea); it was regarded as a plant of the “witch” Medea (who may have been a Scythian shamaness). Apparently, oleander also had something to do with the wines that were drunk during the Dionysian orgies. Oleander was a popular subject in the wall frescos of Pompeii, a city known for its Bacchic mysteries. Oleander leaves contain the powerful cardiac poison oleandrin, which can be life-threatening for humans and animals because it can paralyze the heart. Also present are digitalis-like glycosides (neriine, nerianthine, adyrin, cotenerin). The milky latex contains salacin and other alkaloids. Although oleander is frequently said to be toxic, the toxicological literature contains no observations of dangerous intoxications resulting from the consumption of the flowers and leaves (Frohne and Pfander 1983, 47).

An alchemical papyrus dated from the late ancient times contains a puzzling recipe made with “mad honey”: “Preparation of emerald. 1 part burned copper, 2 parts verdigris, and a corresponding amount of Pontic honey, cook for one hour” (in Hengstl 1978, 272).

Like all later alchemical recipes, this recipe appears to contain secret instructions for a consciousness process associated with the transmutation of matter. The inclusion of psychoactive honey is particularly interesting.

In ancient times, honey was mixed with ground medicinal herbs (such as wormwood [cf. Artemesia absinthium]) and other pharmaceutical substances to produce what were know as “lick agents,” a kind of pharmaceutical “hard candy.” Some of these may have had psychoactive effects, for example: “A remedy to cool the uterus: hemp is pounded in honey and administered to the vagina. This is a contraction [of the uterus]” (Papyrus Ebers 821 [1550 B.C.E.]; in Manniche 1989, 82).

The Mayans regard honey (cab) as a gift of the bee gods (ah muzen cab), a food from the heavens (Tozzer and Allen 1910, 298 ff.). An indigenous form of apiculture was practiced in the Yucatan in pre-Columbian times (Brunius 1995). In the Yucatan and Selva Lacandona regions (Chiapas), several species of native stingless bees (Family Meliponidae) make their honey from the nectar of specific flowers. The Lacandon know that at certain times of the year (the flowering periods), bees produce types of honey that have psychoactive or inebriating effects, even when consumed in small amounts. As little as one tablespoon is sufficient to produce noticeable effects. I once tried two tablespoons of such honey dissolved in atole (a maize drink) and experienced rather strong feelings of inebriation and extreme good cheer.

The Yucatec Maya have domesticated Melipona beecheii and now keep these bees in special hives (hollowed-out tree trunks) to produce honey (Buchmann and Nabhan 1996). The significance of this honey is more religious and ritual than culinary. It is offered at various planting rites and also is fermented to make balche’, which is a type if mead (Brunis 1995). In the Yucatan, the honey made from certain vines (Ipomoea spp. and Turbina corymbosa) is called xtabentum of xtabentun (Souza Novelo et al. 1981, 32). Such honey has psychoactive effects and is preferred for making balche’. A liquor known by the same name is produced in the region of Valladolid. This honey is usually harvested in November and December (Brunius 1995, 20).

Certain active constituents in plants can pass into the nectar of the flowers, and the bees metabolize these either not at all or only a little when they produce the honey. For example, the toxic grayanotoxins present in rhododendrons and the tropane alkaloids (especially atropine) found in belladonna flowers can both pass into the honey that is derived fromtheir flowers.

Some species of rhododendron, for example azaleas, contain the toxic terpene andromedotoxin (= grayanotoxin, rhodotoxin).

Name	Botanical Name	Reference
aconite	Aconitum napellus
Alpine rose	Rhodedendron ferrugineum L.	Roth et al. 1994, 613
azalea	Rhododendron simsii Planch.	Roth et al. 1994, 614 ff.
belladona	Atropa belladonna L.	Hazslinksi 1956
euphorbia (Africa)	Euphorbia spp.	Rüdiger 1974, 93
grass infected with Claviceps	Paspalum plicatulum Michz. Paspalum unispicatum (Sm.) Nash	Arenas 1987, 289
Greenland tea	Ledum groenlandicum L.	Palmer-Jones 1965
hemp	Cannabis	Reports by hemp growers
oleander	Nerium oleander L.	Rätsch 1996a, 267; Roth et al. 1994, 511
paullinia	Paullinia australis	Millspaugh 1974, 167
ragwort	Senecia jacobaea L.	Frohne and Pfänder 1983, 66
rhododendron (Pontic alpine rose)	Rhododendron ponticum L. [syn. Alazea pontica, Heraclea pontica]	Fuhner 1943, 203; Plugge 1981
toé	Brugmansia sanguinea
tutu	Coriaria arborea Lindsay (cf. Coriaria thymifolia)	Palmer-Jones and White 1949
water-hemlock	Cicuta virosa L.	Rüdiger 1974, 93
wild rosemary	Ledum palustre L.	Ott 1993, 404
xtabentum	Turbina coymbosa Ipomoea triloba L. Ipomoea spp.	Souza Novelo et al. 1981, 32
yew	Taxus baccata L.