Dr. Peter Molan, MBE, the discoverer of the unique antibacterial activity in manuka honey.
“There are things in this book even I didn’t know about manuka. I literally couldn’t put it down.”
Manuka: The Biography of an Extraordinary Honey chronicles the remarkable ‘rags-to-riches’ story of manuka honey, as seen through the eyes of a New Zealand beekeeping specialist who watched it unfold from the very beginning. It’s a great tale of science, in which an inquisitive university lecturer found something totally unexpected in a product everyone had written off.
It’s also an entertaining account of the way that seemingly simple discovery caught the international media’s attention, helping enterprising New Zealanders to develop manuka honey-based products and take them all around the globe. But above all else it’s a story of hope for the future, sounding a note of optimism in a world that for good reason feels saddened and sometimes even afraid about the future of the special relationship we humans have always had with those marvellous creatures, the honey bees.