Our responsibility

Beekeeping

We try and work together with only the best beekeepers in New Zealand. Being the best isn't always easy, that's why we encourage good beekeeping practices to all our beekeepers and provide guidance on what the market requirements are, when necessary. By doing so, we have successfully launched a complete product range for Zealandia Honey® which includes some of the most innovative beekeeping methods in the industry whilst achieving certifications such as organic honeys and harvesting from one single origin. We aim to influence beekeepers by working together towards a sustainable future.

Good Honey grows on trees

For a long time beekeepers have tried to obtain monofloral honeys. Like wine, they tend to return higher dollar values back into beekeeper’s pockets and make the extra effort worthwhile.

"As a beekeeper this means I need to understand the special relationship bees have with the flowers"

Andrew Stratford
Selected beekeeper for Zealandia Honey®

CONTINUED

This is also particularly true of Manuka honey. Good beekeepers have this knowledge worked out. They plan and prepare to ensure they have everything organised well in advance. They read the seasons and have all their processes lined up. They don’t focus too much on the unnecessary and focus a lot on the critical things, like colony strength and timing along with what’s happening with the trees. This in turn can mean the difference between high, medium and low-quality honeys. A good beekeeper can turn what would be an average quality honey into a superb one just by being sharp enough to make better decisions. That’s what we try to do in our business. Nothing quite like producing some of the best quality honey. It’s worth the extra effort.

Opportunities

Natural as standard.

The Mānuka honey tree (Leptospermum scoparium) grows uncultivated throughout, Aotearoa, New Zealand. This gives beekeepers the opportunity to place their hives in some of the remotest regions of the country. Untouched by human interference and mostly free from pesticides and other harmful products. We are lucky to have this pristine land at our expense and to ensure you only get the best from our land we test our honey for pesticides such as glyphosate and foreign matter.

We encourage beekeepers to use biodegradable products whilst maintaining a healthy hive and bee population.

ABOUT PESTICIDE SCREENING

Adulteration

Don't be greedy

The nectar that bees bring back to the hives contains sugars and high protein pollen and is essential for the survival of the bee colony. A healthy hive will produce a lot of honey and being too greedy as a beekeeper does not benefit your little workers at all. To avoid having to provide additional 'feed' to the bees we encourage beekeepers not to take all honey out of the hives and feed wastage back to the bees. We ask our selected beekeepers to avoid adding refined sugars.

Sugars produced from tropical plants like sugar cane and maize or corn are produced using a photosynthetic pathway referred to as the C4 pathway. Nectar which is collected by bees comes from plants that use a different process of photosynthesis, referred to as the C3 pathway. This way we can identify adulteration in honey through a simple laboratory test that we perform on all our products.

More on laboratory testing
Read the article

Encouraging beekeepers to go for Gold

No cooking involved

We do not cook our honey to ensure all the goodness stays in.

Treated with care

The only thing we do is cream our honey to perfection. That's it.

Doing more

For the community

We're commited to doing more for the community by trying to establish fair trading between beekeepers, local businesses and manufacturers because we all work hard and deserve a fair price.

Learn more

Working together with local businesses, supporting the beekeeping community around us. For those honeys bound to a geographical location we try and use the resources in that specific region.

By keeping the hives close to our packing facilities we can reduce the carbon footprint of our beautiful products. We don't want to leave a mark on the planet, we want to leave a mark when it comes to honey production by using sustainable practices and resources.