5 Health Benefits From Bees, and 5 That Call for Caution

A spoonful of sugar may help the medicine go down, but what if the sweet stuff is the medicine? Sounds too good to be true, but the evidence is piling up that honey has some real medical value, especially for healing wounds and burns. When it comes to other bee products, however, be wary. Much of the buzz around royal jelly, bee venom, and propolis may be more scientific fiction than fact. U.S. News scoured the medical literature to find five situations in which today's best scientific evidence suggests that our six-legged, pollen-toting pals can help, and five for which the jury's still out.

Bee products can help if...

You have a burn. Seared your hand while baking? No worries. Of the many supposed medical benefits of honey, few have been studied as extensively as its soothing effect on burns. In fact, a review published this week in Cochrane Reviews synthesized data from multiple studies and concluded that honey reduces healing time more than conventional gauze and film dressings that are often used to treat moderate burns.

You have an infected foot or leg ulcer that's slow to heal. Nope, this doesn't mean that downing a teaspoon of honey will make the gaping ulcer on your leg magically disappear. In fact, treating an ulcer with honey doesn't involve eating even a drop of honey. Here's how it does work: There's a certain type of honey from New Zealand called Manuka honey that has potent antimicrobial properties. Your doctor can get you a prescription for a wound dressing infused with this honey, and some studies suggest it can hasten healing. Read more about Manuka honey in this U.S. News report.

You have a cough. If you think over-the-counter cough medications actually help, think again. The FDA has been questioning the value of these medicines, and the agency has warned that children under the age of 2 should never use them because of potential side effects. What are parents to do when they've got a sneezing, sniffling, coughing kid on their hands? A spoonful of buckwheat honey might be a good place to start. Researchers at Penn State College of Medicine recently compared honey with a cough suppressant called dextromethorphan and found that honey worked better.

You have Fournier's gangrene. Fournier's gangrene, a frightening type of gangrene that mainly affects men, is caused by a bacterial infection that infiltrates the genital region. Though quite rare, the combination of virulent and aggressive microbes that cause the problem can result in organ failure and death. Thankfully, honey seems to help. A study published in 2004 showed that men treated with honey-soaked gauze dressings recovered more quickly than those who got a common solution called Eusol, which is a combination of lime, boric acid, and water. While some patients in both groups died (1 of the 14 men in the honey group, 2 of 16 in the Eusol group) and nine in each group required skin grafts, the men treated with honey were released from the hospital after an average of 19 days, compared with 27 days for the Eusol group.

You're infected with MRSA. Methicillin-resistant Staph aureus has long been a threat in hospitals, and the antibiotic-resistant bacterium has recently emerged in places other than healthcare settings. Usually, MRSA bacteria infects only its victim's skin, which results in a reddish rash, but sometimes the colony penetrates farther into the body, where it can become fatal. The good news is that research shows Manuka honey is surprisingly adept at killing the bug.