Mana Kai Honey owner Sera Grubb (left) and retail manager Danya Gore with Mayor John Carter, who judged the Bee Awareness Month colouring in by Awanui School children.
Mana Kai Honey owner Sera Grubb (left) and retail manager Danya Gore with Mayor John Carter, who judged the Bee Awareness Month colouring in by Awanui School children.
Awanui's Mana Kai Honey spared no effort to make the most of Bee Awareness Month in September, but its commitment to promoting the importance of honey bees, in terms of the environment and the key to an increasingly important Far North industry, was no one-off.
Sera Grubb, who founded ManaKai with her partner Bobby Leef in 2013, said the company had a duty of care to the community in terms of raising and maintaining awareness of the important resource that bees represented in the Far North, and the environmental challenges they face, and that went far beyond an annual awareness month.
September was special though. The company had visited nearby Awanui School to talk to the children about bees and honey, giving the school a hive that the pupils had now painted and decorated, and was about to be populated with bees.
The same had been done at Kaingaroa School, where the children had planted a bee-friendly garden, and more schools would be invited to become involved in the future.
Some of the Awanui children had also entered a competition, colouring-in Mana Kai's new Maori bee logo, while others made designs to decorate tea towels.
The colouring-in winner, as judged by Mayor John Carter, was Azaleia Walker, while two tea towel designs, by Aleksei Travena and AJ Epiha, areto be produced for sale at the Mana Kai shop in Awanui's main street.
