The buzzword for patients with stomach ulcers is bee glue, according to a North Yorkshire company.

Bee Health Ltd has teamed up with a pharmaceutical professor in a bid to persuade sufferers to use the glue as medicine.

Formally known as Propolis, bees collect the glue as a sticky secretion from tree buds in spring and completely cover their hives with it as a protection against bacteria.

Now Professor Arnold Beckett, former President of the International Body of Pharmacy has published research showing that the glue apparently kills the bacteria that cause stomach ulcers.

Bee Health Ltd's managing director Steve Ryan says: "Propolis has been known as a natural health product for thousands of years, regarded as an antibiotic in Eastern Europe countries and Far East. It is the bees' immune system, protecting them from infection."

His company, based in East Ayton, is a major UK refiner of Propolis and exports about 70 per cent of its output, mostly to Japan.

Professor Beckett says that purified Propolis showed "amazing success" when used on Helicobactor Pylori in laboratory tests. H. Pylori is the bacteria that causes stomach ulcers.

The Professor says: "The only other treatment for H. Pylori consists of three very large doses of antibiotics."

In a paper entitled The Anti-H. Pylori activity of Bee Propolis says Bee Health provided the quality Propolis for tests. He writes: "Recent in-vitro trials I have done which amazed me were on the bacteria Helicobactor Pylori of which there are 21 strains. The Propolis showed activity against all strains at minuscule doses as low as 0.05 per cent."