"Bees like nice still days and warm weather and a lot of flowers don't yield nectar if the ground temperatures don't get up to a certain level. In the top half of the North Island Manuka flowers early when it's pretty unsettled weather with a lot of wind and bees don't like wind; they won't fly if it's above 10 to 15 kilometres per hour because they get blown around, so they stay home."
"We produce pohutukawa honey on Rangitoto Island but we didn't take hives there (last summer) because the Pohutukawa just didn't flower."
Stuckey says bee deaths through colony collapse disorder have affected global honey production at a time when demand is increasing, in part because of the shift away from refined sugar and corn starch to more natural sweeteners.
That growing demand has helped push up prices here but Stuckey says international customers are still prepared to pay extra for New Zealand honey because it has such a good reputation.
"We've put up our prices considerably this year. Japan and China just say 'oh yeah, right' and go on and sell it."
Waitemata Honey recently sent an 18 tonne container load of honey to China where it sold so fast "they're talking about taking a container load a month."
While the price bonanza might be good for exporters, it's a headache for companies supplying the domestic market and using honey in food manufacturing.
Honey Meisters is a Canterbury-based business that packs honey aimed at the tourist and gift market, and makes honey-based products such as Beenut Butter. It has stores in Kapiti and Wellington and also sells online. Over the past three months owner Kris Jansen has faced a 40 per cent increase in the price of the manuka honey she buys from beekeepers. "Prices are unprecedented."
Already paying up to $18 a kilo for manuka honey, Jansen expects it to climb higher still and says even clover honey that used to cost under $5 a kilo is up to $6 or $7. Native honeys such as rata, rewarewa and kamahi are in very short supply. "One of my beekeepers only got 10 per cent of his normal crop."
Beekeepers Association president Barry Foster says higher honey prices are offset by the fact that apiarists have had to contend with increased costs for fuel, labour and sugar (used to feed bees in bad weather), and a growing number of apiarists are spending up to $160 per hive to have them helicoptered into manuka growing areas.
Foster says there's concern the honey price rise will increase pressure on regulators to allow the importation of cheap honey, currently banned because of the risk of introducing new bee diseases to New Zealand.
"We have been fighting tooth and nail to keep these out. Importing honey is a bit like allowing the importing of kiwi fruit pollen and we know the consequences of that with Psa (disease) in the kiwifruit industry."
