September 25, 2026 · 4 min read
Screening 500 American honeys for medicine
Medical-grade honey is dominated by Manuka. The $2.8M USDA-funded HONEY Pathway, co-directed by Prof. Dr. Öztürk, asks whether U.S. honeys can match it — and has analyzed 500+ samples to find out.
Based on the published research of Prof. Dr. Ferhat Öztürk, Chief Scientific Officer, MELYVERA.
The Manuka monopoly — and the question behind it
Ask where medical-grade honey comes from and one answer dominates: Manuka, from New Zealand and Australia. Its antibacterial potency is well characterized, and it anchors most clinical honey products on the market.
But dominance is not the same as exclusivity. The HONEY Pathway program starts from a different question: among the thousands of honeys produced across the United States, which ones have medical-grade bioactivity — and could any rival Manuka?
A $2.8M USDA bet on students and bees
The HONEY Pathway is a five-year initiative funded by a $2.8M grant from the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Prof. Dr. Öztürk serves as a co-director of the program.
Its design is unusual: it trains underrepresented students as urban beekeepers while running a genuine research pipeline. Education and discovery are the same project — students learn beekeeping by producing the samples the lab then analyzes.
500 samples and counting
The lab's core work is bioactivity screening: analyzing honey samples for the antibacterial and related properties that define medical-grade potential. More than 500 U.S. honey samples have been analyzed so far.
Each sample is a data point in a map of American honey bioactivity — floral source by floral source, region by region — that barely existed before the program.
A Honey Analysis Lab in Eagle Pass
The program's analytical home has grown with it. At Sul Ross State University International in Eagle Pass, Texas — where Prof. Dr. Öztürk is Associate Professor of Biology — a Honey Analysis Lab and teaching apiary now anchor the screening work, supported by research grants including a 2025 award from the Santa Clara Bee Guild.
Why a domestic pipeline matters
If U.S. honeys with medical-grade bioactivity can be identified and characterized, the implications go beyond science: a domestic supply of clinical-grade honey, new value for American beekeepers, and research that doesn't depend on a single floral source from the other side of the world.
That is the long bet of the HONEY Pathway — and the reason screening sample 501 matters as much as sample one.
This article summarizes published research and discusses honey science in general. It makes no claims about MELYVERA products.
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