Manuka Honey is not new...and your New Zealander mother would have heard of it.
I started with it because of bed sores on a cancer patient..and it, indeed, worked.
Manuka Honey is big business...and lot of lawsuits over the Maori word for the bush..including lawsuits with Australia.
And internal strife
https://teaomaori.news/what-manuka-honey-maori-beekeepers-could-have-been-making-half-million
But the honey is a NOT NEW thing