The mysterious benefits of the original amber nectar

HUMANS HAVE been buzzing about bees for millennia. As well as being our original source of sweetness, honey has been used for health and beauty for at least 4,000 years, and some of these ancient therapies are being rediscovered today.

The notion that a spoonful of honey helps the medicine go down must have been especially good news to the ancient Egyptians, whose remedies contained mouse droppings and the like. Honey itself later became both prevention and cure. Followers of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras thought you should breakfast daily on bread and honey for disease-free longevity. Over the centuries, it has been recommended for a wide number of specific uses, from soothing sore throats to easing stomach complaints.

When honey went out of favour with the advance of modern medicine, it fell to Dr Peter Molan, a British-born biochemist working in New Zealand, to get it back on the health agenda. Molan focused on the use of honey to speed wound recovery. Sugary honey is acidic and destroys microbes by osmotic force as well as containing the enzyme glucose oxidase, which helps produce hydrogen peroxide to destroy bugs. This is why it helps heal wounds and burns quickly and effectively. Beyond this, Molan set out to discover just why the Maori favoured manuka honey for natural remedies. Thanks to his work, such honey has been scientifically proven to be especially anti-bacterial and manuka honey dressings were this year licensed for use on the NHS.

Honey is not the only healthy product of the hive. Propolis, a resinous "bee-glue" collected by the bees from plants and used as cement to patch up holes in the hive, has a growing number of fans, who use a few daily drops of its tincture to ward off colds. It can act as an anti- bacterial agent and some dentists are using it on mouth ulcers, to clear infections and heal cuts. It is also recommended for use on cold sores.

Further evidence that bees know best comes in the form of pollen. The bees collect this high-protein substance from plants to feed their developing young - but canny humans have learnt to use it as well. Abraham Lincoln preferred the honey on his bread to be mixed with pollen while the heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali not only stung like a bee, he ate like one too by boosting his diet with pollen. A tablespoon on your breakfast porridge can help you get through a hard day’s slog in the office.

A large part of the appeal of all these hive products is that they are unadulterated substances. Honey is the nectar of plants painstakingly collected and concentrated by colonies of 60,000 or so bees, with each insect making less than half a teaspoonful in an average lifespan of six weeks. No wonder we are turning to it as a healthy alternative to chemically processed sugar as well as for medicinal uses. Delicious to eat, it is good for us in every sense of the word.

While researching my book, I came across a specialist shop in Paris selling more than 40 honeys. One of their leaflets attached curative qualities to particular honeys. Acacia is meant to be calming, lavender to ease respiratory problems such as coughs, rosemary is said to stimulate digestion while lime blossom aids sleep. Whether or not all this is true, customers return again and again to refill their 5kg pails and take the shop’s recommended "dose" of five teaspoonfuls a day. Since some of these customers are now nearly as old as the shop, which opened in 1898, perhaps honey really is an elixir of life.

Sweetness & Light: the Mysterious History of the Honey Bee by Hattie Ellis is published by Sceptre at 16.99.