High on a Northland hill, editor at large Shayne Currie meets a fourth-generation beekeeper and tastes, literally, the sweet success of a prized New Zealand export.
The bees, thousands of the little blighters, noisily swarm their hives, abuzz in their own maniacal orbits.
As I loom closer, one of them uses my bald head as a landing pad. I wonder if it was wise to turn down the offer of a head veil.
But fourth-generation beekeeper Liam Gavin exudes confidence – he’s in a T-shirt and over the last few days was working in shorts as well.
“They are not that active today,” he says. “You do get used to it. Some days they are not as happy. When they are busy getting honey, they are not too fussed about us.”
Suddenly one of them becomes very fussed.
It’s making a distinctly different sound. It’s pissed off, and it’s landed on my collar, and then neck. Gavin swoops with his bare hand, grabbing and flicking it away. His Mr Miyagi-like chopsticks move has saved me from a sting.
That the bees are abuzz is a critically important and confidence-boosting sign, high on this Northland hilltop, west of Whangārei. There are similar signs in regions such as Bay of Plenty.
Today, we’re surrounded by hundreds of flowering mānuka trees. All the signs point to a bountiful mānuka honey harvest, if the warm, sunny weather holds up as expected over the next few days, following a mild spring. Under sunny skies, the bees work furiously.
There is cautious optimism in the mānuka honey industry.
The mānuka tree only flowers at this time of the year, and only for between three and six weeks. Gavin and his family business, Gavins Apiaries, are entirely focused on this period. Time is of the essence to prepare the hives and to extract as much top-grade mānuka honey as possible.
Mānuka honey is liquid gold, with prices anywhere from $15-$20 for a small jar up to more than $100. On rare occasions, depending on the grade, mānuka honey can sell for thousands of dollars.
Here and overseas, retailers have sometimes struggled to keep it on their shelves, and not just because of high consumer demand.
Shoplifters love it as well; a few years ago a Hamilton New World store resorted to filling empty mānuka honey containers with rice – shoppers could swap it with the real thing at the counter.
Only two years ago, New Zealand was drowning in mānuka honey as a beekeeping boom coincided with a drop in international demand. As the Guardian reported in 2022: “Over the past five years, global desire for mānuka honey and demand for home-based honey remedies during the pandemic helped push up prices, creating a kind of honey gold rush on New Zealand farms”.
Since then, there’s been an equilibrium.
Gavin says that at its peak, there were one million hives in the New Zealand beekeeping industry. That’s now down to about 500,000. “There’s been growth in sales continuously but the production of the product outstripped how fast we could grow the markets overseas.”
He is confident the growing demand for mānuka will be better handled this time around. “We would like to see the markets grow steady with the growth of the hive numbers, rather than the hive numbers growing ahead of markets overseas.”
As Liam Gavin negotiates a steep, uneven and narrow track through the mānuka trees in his 4WD ute, it’s not hard to see why he loves the business.
“You get out in pretty cool places in nature. You’re not sitting in traffic or dealing with all of those sorts of things.”
The origins of the business stretch back to 1912, when Liam’s great-grandfather James John Gavin saddled up his horse in the Mangakahia Valley and followed the river to catch a swarm of bees.
The business has been in the family’s hands, in the same area, for 112 years. Liam’s grandfather left school at 13 to be a beekeeper, and his dad John left school to do the same at 16.
Gavin himself, now 32, spent a handful of years away from home after leaving school but soon returned and now runs the business. He has even started taking his two young children to the hives. A fifth generation in the making, perhaps.
Gavins Apiaries has 1000-1200 hives and typically produces 20-40 tonnes of mānuka honey each season but that can fluctuate wildly. In bad weather seasons, such as Cyclone Gabrielle, it’s next to nothing.
Honey industry leaders say mānuka’s health properties are at the heart of a honey export industry that generated more than $420 million in export revenue in the 12 months to August this year.
The Chinese market has dropped back in recent years, but confidence is growing that it will return. About 95% of Gavins Apiaries’ honey is sold to exporters and packers, with its top markets of China, the US and Europe.
Gavin’s hopes for a boom season are tempered by the global economic outlook and people’s limited disposable income. “The business is navigating tough economic times globally. Low disposable income in many households is putting pressure on the industry since mānuka honey is considered a luxury rather than a necessity.”
Nevertheless, he takes a positive approach to his business – and life. “We’re always optimistic because you don’t want to be doom and gloom your whole life. That’s just a miserable way to live. We always go at it as if it’s going to be an amazing season.”
He’s even more positive about mānuka honey’s health benefits.
He estimates he goes through a 1kg jar every three to four weeks – including a spoonful in his coffee.
“I am very big on pushing how good mānuka honey is for you,” he says. “I preach about using it for colds and just using it daily to keep your immunity up against bugs and sicknesses.”
Increasingly, he says, health studies are showing the benefit of it for wounds – applied directly to help heal cuts.
UMF Honey Association chief executive Tony Wright says while many beekeepers are currently experiencing major challenges, mānuka honey offered long-term opportunities.
“Mānuka honey is a young agricultural industry that after a long period of growth is having to look hard at how it is structured in a world that looks very different than the one the industry grew up in. Mānuka is only just getting established in some major markets and as people continue to move more and more toward natural health solutions, they can trust mānuka will be an important part of the category.”
As we travel back from the hives to the company’s honey extraction facility, rain now falling, Liam Gavin observes his bees were actually a little bit on edge today, undoubtedly sensing the looming wet weather.
“If you go out on a really hot sunny day, they are not interested in you at all.”
The bees are just getting on with producing one of New Zealand’s most successful exports.
Gavin says: “It’s nice to know that we’re producing something, selling it to an overseas market and bringing overseas dollars into the country. That we’re contributing to the country in that way.”
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor.
The man then went on to kick a police officer while being walked to a patrol car.