Poor honey production season not all bad news

Jim McMillan at the hive of True Honey activity in the Oringi Business Park, south of Dannevirke. Photo / Leanne Warr

It’s looking to be a very poor honey production season, but according to True Honey Co chief executive and founder Jim McMillan, that might help balance out an oversupply.

With record rainfall over the past few months, it has meant fewer dry, hot days.

“Primarily from a production standpoint - during the winter months, it doesn’t matter that bees are quite dormant during that period of the year.”

But the lack of settled, sunny weather, a bane to many in the primary production industry, brought with it challenges, especially for True Honey Co, which produces high-grade mānuka honey.

McMillan said up to 10 months of the year were spent caring for the bees and preparing them for honey production.

“The real vital period, from a meteorological environmental perspective, is really during the mānuka flowering.”

Which meant that the optimal conditions were hot and dry. But in the Tararua District, as well as in other parts of the country, it had been the opposite.

“It’s looking like it’s going to be a very poor honey production season at this point in time.”

McMillan said leading up to the flowering period for mānuka, the continued wet conditions had a negative impact on the trees themselves.

He said in a lot of areas in the Tararua District, as well as the wider east coast, the mānuka hadn’t flowered very well, and there had been a lack of heat and a lack of days when the bees could get out, forage and collect nectar.

Poor weather has meant bees haven't been out foraging. Photo / Getty Images

“With those three things combined, it has contributed toward a poor harvest or poor yield for the year.”

However, over the past few years, the industry had been experiencing an oversupply of mānuka honey.

McMillan said about five or six years ago demand was exceeding supply, and that brought a lot of new participants to the industry, which, along with low barriers to entry, meant that anyone could go and buy a few mānuka vines, learn a little about beekeeping and start their own production.

“Over the past four or five years, the number of beehives in the country has increased threefold. That has been causing some issues in the industry by having an oversupply,” McMillan said.

That also meant bulk honey producers weren’t able to sell their products.

If the current weather pattern were to continue for a number of years, in the short-term, it could have a positive impact on honey production, playing a part in correcting the supply/demand imbalance.

“If it was to continue long-term over a period of years, it could flip back on its head again and demand could exceed supply, and then it would become an issue around getting access to adequate supply.

“I think that’s a little way off yet, based on the amount of honey inventory that’s stored around the country.”

McMillan said he felt people could only focus on the things in their control, and weather certainly wasn’t one of them.

“For True Honey, the way we combat weather patterns or weather events where certain parts of the country may be experiencing more unfavourable weather or cooler or wetter conditions than others is to try to maintain a reasonable bit of a geographical spread of our hive placement around the North Island.”

The company would also look to further develop supply partner relationships with producers in other parts of the country should conditions continue.

La Niña is associated with wetter, warmer conditions, greater rainfall and occasional floods. Photo / Thinkstock

From what he understood of the current weather pattern, New Zealand was in the La Niña phase of the Southern Oscillation Index (which gauged the strength of La Niña or El Niño events and their impacts), which predominantly brought wetter and cooler conditions to the north and east of the country.

He said in his experience, it would swing around again at some point and we’d be back to the El Niño pattern, which tended toward hotter and drier weather.

Like any other company around the country, the bad weather over the past year had not been the only challenge True Honey faced, as Covid brought its own set of challenges.

Problems such as inflation had increased freight costs, and getting product from New Zealand to the other side of the world had been challenging and expensive.

McMillan said it had probably caused a lot of volatility in the supply and demand from customers around the world.

“It’s meant that we’ve had to be very nimble and react very quickly when we get a large order from another part of the world that we can quickly bring in or ramp up our output to ensure we can meet the demand to capture those opportunities.”

He said a key element was the importance of being able to accept things for what they were and the ever-changing environment he and his staff were working in, as well as being able to adjust or adapt to the situation regardless.

“Being able to do that quickly has probably been a very important part of managing to get the business where it is today.”