If you believed that the principal benefits to humankind bestowed by bees are a delicious golden spread for your breakfast toast and a high sheen when your grandmother polishes her dining room table, then a couple of hours spent reading Dr Thomas Gloger’s The Power of the Bee will come as a surprise.

This comprehensive and meticulously researched work lays out the enormous array of products and by-products of the humble bee, well beyond honey and wax, and the equally astonishing breadth of application they have in virtually every human condition, ranging from headaches to cancer. Some of these are not for the faint-hearted. Bee Venom Therapy, the act of deliberately causing a bee to sting the patient, might sound like torture but Gloger provides helpful guidance on how many stings and where on the body to administer them to maximise the pain/benefit trade-off. If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, hive air (breathing in the air blown from a beehive) or a honey massage may be more soothing. The author talks you through those in detail too.

The long history of apitherapy is woven throughout the book extending back as far as ancient Egypt (Egyptians used propolis in the mummification process) and ancient Greece, when it was mentioned by Aristotle. It is not a modern fad.

Gloger’s training as a chemist and his career in the chemical industry are evident in the extensive chemical and bio-chemical disclosures which make the book of value both to the interested lay reader and those motivated by scientific research. But it is his decade-long fascination with bees and their potential to treat or ease more or less every conceivable malady which shines through the pages.