New Zealand's manuka honey is known around the world. It fetches extremely high prices, and beekeepers do everything in their power to produce as much of it as they can. Wound dressings containing manuka honey are used in leading hospitals, and it has saved the lives of patients infected with disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to standard antibiotic drugs. In so doing, it has forced the medical profession to re-think its position on the therapeutic properties of natural products. This book chronicles the remarkable 'rags-to-riches' story of manuka honey, as seen through the eyes of a beekeeping specialist who watched it unfold from the very beginning. It's a great science tale of an unassuming university lecturer and his hardworking lab assistant who found something totally unexpected in a product everyone had written off. And it's an entertaining account of the way that simple discovery magically caught the international media's attention, helping some enterprising New Zealanders with a love of bees to develop manuka honey-based products and take them to the rest of the world. The book describes the remarkable antibacterial and therapeutic properties of manuka and the range of uses it has.

The women of this book are mainly Pakeha. They are domestic servants, governors' wives and farmers, married, single, widowed or deserted. They write about love, friendship, children, destitution, illness and grief. Maori women write about land, loss and love, about families and domestic events - in both Maori and English.

A fascinating study that “opens a window on the world of beekeeping and female beekeepers” (Lexington Herald-Leader). From Africa to Australia to Asia, women have participated in the pragmatic aspects of honey hunting and in the more advanced skills associated with beekeeping as hive technology has progressed through the centuries. Who are the women who keep bees and what can we learn from them? Beeconomy examines the fascinating evolution of the relationship between women and bees around the world. Bee expert Tammy Horn profiles female beekeepers, describing their work and how they manage it; the sense of community they enjoy; how beekeeping is relevant to questions about globalization and politics—and how it provides an opportunity for a new sustainable economy, one that takes into consideration environment, children, and family needs.