Immunity care, and the bee behind it

Taking care of your immune system when you're sick isn't immune care. Its damage control. It's a foundation the rest of the body relies on every day. A strong immune system does more than help you avoid a cold. It's directly linked to long-term health. Research shows that ongoing, low-grade immune dysfunction is linked to a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, chronic lung conditions such as COPD, and death from any cause. A well-functioning immune system also supports a better quality of life, especially for people managing an existing health condition.

Most of what keeps a body resilient happens on the boring days, in what you eat and how much you sleep. And medicinal honey offers that resiliency. Not all honey are made equal. Manuka honey, the most widely known medicinal honey, is high in sugar, and excess sugar works against the immune system it's marketed to help. Made by rare stingless bees, Trigona honey is also naturally much lower in sugar than most honey. That mix of lab-tested antibacterial potency and naturally low sugar is why our customers keep coming back for more.

Most honey isn't what it says on the jar

A 2011 Food Safety News investigation found most grocery-store honey in the US had been ultra-filtered, stripping out the pollen that would prove where it came from. A European Commission test of imported honey found close to half the samples were suspect, cut with syrup and sold as pure. None of that shows up on the label, only in a lab. So the real question isn't the story on the jar. It's whether what's inside is honey at all.

add photo: honey jars side by side

How Trigona Stacks

500g vs 30kg

Amount of honey one Trigona hive makes in a year vs. a honeybee hive.

Up to 40%

Crop yield increase our farmers report once bees replace pesticides.

20% vs 80%

Amount of sugar our Trigona honey tested, vs. most honey.

Meet Trigona (Tetragonula) biroi

A stingless bee native to the Philippines, easy to mistake for a house fly if you're not looking closely. It has no sting, which is unusual among bees, and makes a honey unlike the one most people grew up with. Beekeepers in remote parts of the Philippines told us about it years before anyone else had heard of it.

How these tiny bees are saving farmers

Many farmers in the Philippines are caught in a cycle that has little to do with the weather. They borrow money from local traders to buy fertilizer and pesticides, then sell their harvest back to the same traders, who set the price. Because the loan comes due regardless of how the crop performs, farmers often have little room to negotiate, and many stay in debt season after season. This lending pattern is well documented across Philippine smallholder agriculture.

The pesticides bought this way carry a cost beyond money. Research on Filipino rice farmers has linked pesticide exposure to neurological, respiratory, skin, and eye symptoms, ranging from headaches and dizziness to more serious chronic effects. The same chemicals are also documented to kill stingless bees, the pollinators our honey depends on. The input meant to protect one season's harvest ends up working against the farmer's own health, and against the insects that help next season's crops succeed.

Our beekeepers work with farmers to break that pattern, teaching them to keep Trigona bees as pollinators instead of spraying around them. The bees line their nests with propolis, a resin with real antimicrobial properties that protects against bacterial and fungal disease. And because Trigona is a different bee lineage from the European honeybee, it isn't a host for Varroa, the parasitic mite that forces commercial beekeepers to treat their hives with miticides. A Trigona hive needs neither antibiotics nor miticides to stay healthy.

“It isn't a cure. It's a food that supports what your immune system is already trying to do.”

What the research found

Antibacterial

A 2021 study found this species active against multidrug-resistant Staph, using Manuka as the benchmark.

Antifungal

Broader studies on stingless bee honey found activity against a wide range of microbes.

Lower sugar

Lower total sugar than honey from honeybees across published studies. Anaya's tested to be less than 20%.

Antioxidant

Anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activity shown in lab and animal studies.

Deep dive into the research into the difference between Manuka honey and Trigona honey.

Learn More

When to take what

Trigona honey for every day, Trigona propolis extract for extra strength.

Trigona Honey

If you're building this into a household routine, the honey is the everyday one. It's the low-sugar, higher-propolis alternative to whatever you're already using to lightly sweeten a bowl of oats, or tea.

Trigona Propolis

Propolis is what we reach to for when something's already coming on or hasten recovery: the first sniffle, or the week everyone at school has the same cough. It's more concentrated so you don't need to take it as regularly as the honey.

Common questions

No. Manuka comes from a shrub pollinated by ordinary honeybees in New Zealand. Trigona honey comes from a stingless bee native to the Philippines. It's rarer, at around 500 grams a hive a year against roughly 30 kilograms for a typical honeybee hive, and it's lower in sugar.

Stingless bees like Trigona biroi produce honey with a different moisture and sugar profile than European honeybees. Published lab studies consistently measure lower total sugar content in stingless bee honey compared to honey from Apis mellifera.

Honey of any kind, including Trigona honey, shouldn't be given to babies under 12 months old because of the risk of infant botulism. For children over one, check with your paediatrician first if they have a known allergy to bee products, since both honey and propolis come from the hive.

Look for a named source farm or region, not just a country of origin, and buy from a company that will tell you which beekeepers it works with. Honey is one of the most commonly adulterated foods in the world, and a jar diluted with syrup won't carry the compounds that come from having actually been made by bees.

See where your immunity stands

Check yours or your loved ones immune strength levels with our easy to use tool based on research on levers affecting immune systems.

Check Immune Strength

Trigona and immunity, in short

What it is: Honey and propolis from Trigona (Tetragonula) biroi, a stingless bee native to the Philippines.
Sugar content: Lower in total sugar than honey from Apis mellifera, the European honeybee, based on published physicochemical studies.
Tested antibacterial activity: A 2021 study in Molecules isolated isorhamnetin from Tetragonula biroi honey and found it active against multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, using Manuka as the reference honey.
Propolis: Propolis shows antimicrobial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activity, some of it from flavonoids like quercetin and kaempferol that have shown real antiviral effects against strains of coronavirus and influenza in vitro.
Yield: Around 500 grams of honey per hive per year, against roughly 30 kilograms for a European honeybee hive.
Sourcing: Organically farmed hives near natural forest in the Philippines, worked by beekeepers running a bee pollination education program.
Farmer impact: Crop yield increases of up to 40% reported once farms move from pesticides to bee pollination.

Sources

Suarez et al., "The Isorhamnetin-Containing Fraction of Philippine Honey Produced by the Stingless Bee Tetragonula biroi Is an Antibiotic against Multidrug-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus," Molecules, 2021.
Pu et al., "Propolis does not significantly modulate immune function in an older population: A preliminary study," Heliyon, 2024.
Magnavacca et al., "The antiviral and immunomodulatory activities of propolis: An update and future perspectives for respiratory diseases," 2021.
European Commission coordinated control plan on honey adulteration, EU-wide testing of imported honey.