Mānuka Honey

The Trust has a beekeeping arrangement with Mānuka Health who have their hives on Ngāti Hine whenua. Mānuka Health manages all aspects of the mānuka honey business and the Trust receives a share of net profits as well as a wintering fee for holding the hives. The New Zealand mānuka honey sector still faces structural challenges due to a very large surplus of mānuka inventories and ongoing surplus production (too many hives). Whilst various initiatives have been undertaken to tackle this problem, beekeepers in Taitokerau continue to face the challenge relating to the Government’s scientific definition for mānuka honey.  This means that a significant proportion of the mānuka honey crop in Taitokerau does not meet the mānuka definition. By partnering with Mānuka Health, who are long-established and a leading global mānuka honey brand, we have the collective expertise from land to hive to shelf ensuring high quality and product integrity. 

 

Orchard Pollination

From 2024, we will be providing pollination services to the Trust’s own Kiwifruit orchards. Most kiwifruit growers rely on the beekeeping industry to supply hives for the few weeks over flowering/pollination of their orchards. Given our in-house expertise and capability to deliver this service ourselves, we have expanded the honey business to include pollination. We currently have 500 hives which is sufficient to pollinate the Trust’s 32 canopy hectares of Sungold kiwifruit, with surplus for other orchards. This is quite a lean operation with a worthwhile return generated over the short period of pollination. Over and above that, we expect to produce several hundred kilograms of native bush honey annually.