Discover the Benefits of Manuka Honey for Your Skin

With strong medicinal properties and a creamy texture, Manuka Honey is a beloved skincare ingredient. Learn more about the benefits of Manuka Honey for skin and how you can add this efficacious ingredient to your skincare routine.

What is Manuka Honey?

Manuka Honey is a dark, creamy honey with very high antioxidant activity compared to other honeys. Manuka Honey is monofloral, which means that it comes mainly from the nectar of one plant species, which gives it specific and more consistent attributes.

Where does Manuka Honey come from?

Mānuka trees, commonly found in Australia and New Zealand, provide the nectar that bees use to create Manuka Honey. In New Zealand, the Maori – the indigenous people of New Zealand – have widely used Manuka Honey in traditional medicine and recipes. Also known as a tea tree, this evergreen has white and pink star-shaped flowers that blossom in early spring and attract bees. Bees collect nectar from these flowers, convert it into honey and drop it into a beeswax comb. On each cell of the honeycomb, the bees fan their wings over the honey to help it evaporate and thicken. Finally, they cap each cell with wax before moving onto the next comb.

Is Manuka Honey good for your skin?

Manuka Honey is known to have the highest levels of polyphenols (micronutrients rich in antioxidants) of all honeys.^I Within skincare formulas, Manuka Honey is known to help fortify skin’s barrier which increases skin’s ability to recover and bounce back from damage. It is also known to help improve resistance to damage for healthier-looking skin over time.

What are the traditional skin benefits of Manuka Honey?

Valued for its indigenous medicinal properties,^II Manuka Honey has been historically used for more than 30 years to treat skin wounds in traditional Maori medicine.^III Since the 1980s, several scientific studies have reported the antibacterial properties of Manuka Honey, elevating its use in skincare.^IV With soothing and purifying properties, Manuka Honey benefits skin when applied topically.

What are the traditional uses of Manuka Honey?

Kiehl’s & Manuka Honey

Kiehl’s uses sustainably-sourced Manuka Honey from the North Island of New Zealand. Our honey comes from an indigenous Maori family-owned company that uses best practices and sustainable methods of sourcing honey to help keep bees protected from harm and prides themselves on maintaining the wellbeing of their hives. Some of their best practices include:

Using careful measures during harvesting to help keep bees calm for a more natural way to lift them from the hive’s frames
Planting several million Mānuka trees to ensure that this “taonga” – or “treasure” in Maori – continues to provide a natural food supply for bees to thrive
Safely transporting beehives between seasons to reduce any stress for the bees
Avoiding chemical pesticides on their own plants and helping protect bees from locations where they might be used

Featured Product

Pure Vitality Skin Renewing Cream

Formulated with New Zealand Manuka Honey and Tibetan Red Ginseng Root, our fortifying and revitalizing moisturizer helps skin renew itself for radiant skin with a youthful-looking glow. With a lightweight, honey-like texture, this cream melts onto skin to help fortify skin’s barrier to revitalize dull skin and help skin bounce back from visible signs of aging. Made with 99.6% naturally derived* ingredients, our cream with Manuka Honey is packaged in a sealed jar to help protect the formula’s potency. Smooth on Pure Vitality Skin Renewing Cream to reveal smooth, radiant, glowing skin.

^*We consider ingredients to be naturally derived if they retain more than 50% of their molecular structure after being processed from a natural source.

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^I Alzahrani, HA, Alsabehi R, Boukraa L, Abdellah F, Bellik Y, Bakhotmah BA. “Antibacterial and antioxidant potency of floral honeys from different botanical and geographical origins.” Molecules 17(9): 10540-90, 2012.
^II Patel S, Cichello S. “Manuka honey; an emerging natural food with medicinal use.” Nat Prod Bioprospect 3: 121-128, 2013.
^III Alvarez-Suarez JM, Gasparrini M. Forbes-Hernández TY, Mazzoni L, Giampier F. “The composition and biological activity of honey: a focus on manuka honey.” Foods 3: 420-432, 2014.
^IV Molan P, Russel KM. “Non-Peroxide Antibacterial Activity in Some New Zealand Honeys.” Journal of Apicultural Research 27 (1) 62 – 67, 1988.