Beekeepers from many regions of New Zealand are reporting a season of two distinct halves, with native “bush” honey varieties boosting quantities, while several major mānuka production areas have failed and clouds have also hung over key South Island white honey regions.
It’s difficult to get a gauge on what the national honey crop might come to in season 2024/25, and many beekeepers are hopeful late-season flows can further boost their honey takes, but one thing is certain – a colder than usual January in many parts of the country has severely limited the honey crop that promised much more pre-Christmas.
“Over a recent 15-day period the regions that have been gloomier than usual for January have been the Far North, Northland, the entire eastern side of the North Island from East Cape down to Wellington, Nelson, Marlborough and the northern half of Canterbury,” wrote Philip Duncan from weatherwatch.co.nz on January 24.
“If you draw a line from Bay of Plenty to Taupō to Whanganui, everywhere east and southeast of there has been more than 2°c below normal. In the South Island, Nelson, Marlborough and most of Canterbury also more than 2°c below what is normal for January.”
Easterly and southerly weather patters have brought those temperatures, meaning areas with mountains to their east (such as the South Island’s West Coast) have seen greater heat in January.
While there is still much testing of honey to take place, few beekeepers spoken to for this report are optimistic about “quality” of mānuka honey with regard to MGO levels as they point to patchy flowering of the tree and the lack of the other key ingredient, stable hot temperatures.
North Island
Starting at the top of the country, Northland beekeepers appear to have benefitted from the warm temperatures that predominated much of New Zealand as the honey began to flow in late-spring/early summer.
“We had a pretty good run on the early honey,” says John Gavin, owner of Gavins Apiaries outside Whangarei.
“We don’t normally get a lot of rewarewa up here, some but not a lot, but this season the hives put a lot of honey on in October. Then our manuka flow was alright, without being good.”
However, from mid-December “it stopped dead” due to a lack of temperature and too much wind. All up though, it shapes as a “reasonably average season” where the “mānuka crop was all right – a lot better than some other places in the country,” Gavin says.
An hour’s drive south, owner of Marshwood Apiaries, Richard Kidd says it was shaping as the best season in a long time, until the mid-December weather change. The quantity of the mānuka honey take is likely to be above average, but he suspects the activity level will be reduced.
On the other side of Auckland, Waikato beekeeper Jane Lorimer says her strongest Hillcrest Apiaries hives have put on a good box of honey, but the weaker colonies very little in what is, all up, a poor honey crop as pastures dried off fast.
“A continual wind since Christmas has meant bees have sat there and done very little,” Lorimer reports.
Further east in the Bay of Plenty, Galatea Apiaries owner Cameron Martin says the rewarewa flowered well, boosting the early-season bush honey.
“Before Christmas we had a reasonable bush flow, but since Christmas, like a lot of places, we have had a lot of colder winds and the clover didn’t produce like we would have liked,” Martin says.
At Kaimai Range Honey, owner Jody Mitchell says the Bay of Plenty flows in spring were the strongest in several years, with the rewarewa again helping them and Tawari going “ok”. The pre-Christmas flows have made for “a nice average season which is nice for a change because the last two seasons have been dire,” she says.
For Bill Savage, owner of Wild Cape Honey on the North Island’s East Cape, it was the same story as many of his beekeeping brethren around the country – a substantial early season crop, but little more post-Christmas.
“The early flow was good and the quality looks good, not that we have tested it yet. The later stuff has been poor though. From mid-December the weather turned and the manuka blew off. It just stopped,” Savage says.
“There are good hives out there though. We have hives doing over 50kg on mānuka, but then the later crop is only about 15kg. Hives that came out of early sites with 30 to 40 kilos have gone to the later sites where they would usually do a similar amount again and have done nothing, or perhaps up to only 15kg.”
Coming down the east coast, Hawke’s Bay was shaping for drought following the heat in the first half of December and Melita Honey CEO Lars Janson says they were hopeful their approximately 800 hives on white honey sites were heading for a “cracker season”. The weather change means they have produced only a box or two of honey, “nothing outrageous, but the flow is still going and there might be some more yet”. Over the entire operation their crop has been badly limited by varroa in the hives though.
“It’s one of our worst seasons. We will probably end up with less than 15kg a hive. A good spring, but our varroa levels have been very hard to get on top of … A disappointing season for us,” Janson says.
The all-important mānuka crop further inland has fizzled for Melita.
“The weather was good through spring and up until Christmas, but with most of our mānuka sites on the Central Plateau they flower later, and the flower was good. I don’t believe the nectar released though. It has been cold and miserable there and it even snowed on the Desert Road in January. That tells the story,” Janson says.
In Wairarapa, Steens Honey apiary manager Jonathan Tiangco says “I want to be optimistic, but the reality so far is not good,” again pointing to the cooler temperatures in January as the limiting factor.
Paul Sergent, owner of River City Honey in Whanganui, says his bush crop has been good, boosted by kamahi, but their mānuka honey take “has not been great”.
“The early sites have done well, but the flowering has been patchy in inland Wanganui and the cool nights have slowed down any good production,” Sergent reports.
A company with as good a feel as any for the North Island honey season is Tweeddale’s Honey and their almost 20,000 hives across central New Zealand. Don Tweeddale says he expects a “very, very poor mānuka season”.
“A few frames of manuka, instead of a box and a half. Quite dramatic and that is pretty much across all our areas,” Tweeddale says.
“The mānuka flowering was not good. A rest year where it pushes its energy into growth and thus only about a third of the normal flowering.”
The bush crop has been much better though – “average to good” – thanks in large part to the rewarewa, while clover returns are continuing and shaping as around average.
Tweeddale’s Honey forecast to have a lot of multifloral mānuka honey, or under UMF10-type monofloral the owner believes. The honey crops in Wanganui and out to the coast in Taranaki have also been poor Tweeddale reports.
South Island
While the national honey season can be described as one of two halves, the South Island’s returns may also be viewed as two differing halves – geographically. On the West Coast the crop is being reported as better than most seasons, while from Marlborough south, through Canterbury and into Otago and Southland, the easterly weather pattern has had a significant limiting effect.
In Canterbury, Hantz Honey owner Barry Hantz is telling a similar story to many North Island apiarists.
“It started really good, and we thought we were back to the usual season where they get into their work from late November, into December. From there though, we got the rain at the right time, but just didn’t get the heat afterwards, from Christmas time,” Hantz says.
“It’s on the poorer side of average, that’s for sure. We might get just over half of last year.”
Geoff Bongard tells a similar story from Ashburton Apiaries base.
“We haven’t got much around here. We haven’t had a summer. We are still waiting and time is running out,” he says.
Following the road south, the story is only marginally better, as Peter Ward of Alpine Honey Specialities checks in from Hawea.
“Central Otago has been really patchy, with quite a few disappointing areas. It just got too dry, then down closer to the coast it really got cool and there was a huge amount of the southerly and easterly weather which limited coastal Otago,” Ward says.
“Our mānuka production is below average in Central Otago, but there have been a few spots in Southland that have produced a bit, but I would say for anyone looking to buy blending mānuka there might not be a lot around.”
Southland’s honey production forecasts to be that of an average season, according to both Ward and Catlins Honey owner Grant Hayes.
“The honey crop will be average, perhaps a bit above average per hive, but we will be well down on total because we are well down on hive numbers,” Hayes says.
That’s due to a historically wet spring in Southland, which hampered queen matings and colony build up in general, meaning Hayes has only half his usual honey supers placed on hives.
“I have been explaining it like this to the farmers: we have an eight-week window to make honey, and the hives were five or six weeks late in building up this year,” the Southland beekeeper says.
Young men were once told to ‘go west’, and they would have done well to heed the advice with their hives on New Zealand’s mainland this summer. With rata showing strong bloom and an inverse weather pattern to much of the rest of New Zealand, there was honey to be had.
“All spring we had rain, rain and more rain and it was slow up until Christmas,” Gary Glasson says from Blackball, home of Glasson Apiaries.
“I was looking at the crop then and thinking, this might be one of our worst, not good at all. Then afterwards the weather came right, the rata came out in flower and away it went.”
Production on kamahi sites was poor he concludes, but they did get a mānuka crop, albeit one Glasson does not expect to be high in activity.
“We are looking at an above average season. I am hesitant to go above that, but there is time for them to fill another box or two, so it could end up being a really good season,” he says.
At the top of the South Island Jeff Lukey runs Sherry Valley Apiaries’ hives between Marlborough and Nelson and the veteran beekeeper says his 50th year in the hives has been a productive one thanks to a hot start.
“It was a very interesting season, a wet and cold spring where an awful lot of sugar was needed to keep them going. Then, from the last week of November and first half of December it went the other way and got sweltering with 30-degree days here. The whole house open at night so you could sleep and the bees took off,” Lukey says.
“I said to my staff ‘we are going to need to have every box in the field’ and, sure enough, by Christmas we had to have the shed up and running to get in the boxes because we had used everything we had plus some new gear we bought. Basically, we had the equivalent of last season’s crop on the bulk of the hives by 20th of December. I had never seen anything like that before. That includes Marlborough, where there was a big kamahi flow.”
Cool weather in January has once again slowed the roll of honey in the top of the South though and Lukey has a local summary which probably sums up where the national honey crop of 2024-25 will finish up “It is not a dismal season, but it is not super fantastic”.
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