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.

But perhaps bees' greatest benefit has been their pollination of crops."--BOOK JACKET.

Bees are often thought of as yellow and black striped insects that live in hives and produce honey. However, Australia’s abundant native bees are incredibly diverse in their appearance and habits. Some are yellow and black but others have blue stripes, are iridescent green or wasp-like. Some are social but most are solitary. Some do build nests with wax but others use silk or plant material, burrow in soil or use holes in wood and even gumnuts! A Guide to Native Bees of Australia provides a detailed introduction to the estimated 2000 species of Australian bees. Illustrated with stunning photographs, it describes the form and function of bees, their life-cycle stages, nest architecture, sociality and relationships with plants. It also contains systematic accounts of the five families and 58 genera of Australian bees. Photomicrographs of morphological characters and identification keys allow identification of bees to genus level. Natural history enthusiasts, professional and amateur entomologists and beekeepers will find this an essential guide.