Our Process

Source sites that are remote and pure. We work with land owners and our own land to ensure the practices are sustainable. Our sites are placed throughout the country, we own some of our land sites and others we work closely with land owners for placement of our hives.

Healthy bees are happy bees. Our bees are both.

We feel it’s our duty to protect our bees. That’s why we’re committed to disease prevention, hive health, and minimal interference on their natural environments.

Our beekeeping team tends to 10,000 hives and millions of bees we place in the natural native forests and fields of New Zealand countryside. And using a blend of cutting-edge technology and time-honored traditions, we track detailed information about the hives to ensure the health and happiness of our bees, and the harvest of consistently exceptional manuka honey.

Through remote terrain, where trucks can’t be imagined, helicopters are flown in to carry Mānuka honey and hives from deep within dense bush and off distant craggy mountain ranges.

Our beekeepers work around the clock over the summer months (when the nectar is flowing), even to the point where they miss their summer holidays and key celebrations such as Christmas! This is because it is the peak time to be moving hives in and out of sites to ensure the most pure nectar flow is collected and that the bees have the best food source available.

Honey is a natural product. For the most part, Mother Nature runs the show. That means the people who produce it (like yours truly, for example) are both grateful for and at the mercy of her natural forces.  

But we love Mother Nature. So here are some things we do to give back to the environment that gives us so, so much:

Replanting & regeneration

In 2019, we planted 150,000 manuka seedlings! Yay for future manuka trees!

We already have certified Organic Apiary’s, where we have 10000 hives placed ensuring we can guarantee no traces of impurity or nasties will ever be found in our honey we have a 2022 Goal:  80% o four hives certified organic

This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Have you ever followed a bee all day? Well, try following 1,000,000 of them when they can travel up to 5kms and busily visit flowers along the way. We need to be able to certify the full flight path of the bees and the surrounding areas from our hives and Apiary sites are also certified organic.! That’s why all of our 10,000 hives are not certified, despite the fact we follow organic practices with our hives and Apiaries.

No GMO:
Never have, never will

Pesticide-free
See above

No antibiotics used in our beekeeping practices

See above the above!

BPA-free packaging
No-brainer!

Recycled PET packaging
Doesn’t take a genius!

Uses ustainable printing methods
Easy-peasy! Why doesn’t EVERYONE do this?

New state-of-the art production facility under construction that uses sustainable power options.

Carbon credits purchased to offset our beekeeping team's travel to remote hive locations.

Honey is gently warmed to allow careful extraction from the honeycomb at our specialised extraction facility in the Hawkes Bay – Melita Honey.

Honey is placed into drums and core samples are taken and sent away to independent labs for testing.

Honey is then placed into our storage facility awaiting processing and packing at our Auckland Facility.  

Our team have crafted an extraction process that is efficient and also ensures there is as little human interference as possible. This is done at our state of the art facility in Hawkes Bay with our team.

The natural flavours, aromas, textures, colours and purity within Manuka honey are all retained with our extraction systems. Hive temperatures are replicated and there is no need for secondary processing.

Drums are transported to our factory from our storage facility once we are ready to pack it in order to meet our customers and sales requirements.

Drums are warmed to the natural temperatures of the hives to facilitate processing. They are transferred to the VATs where the honey is filtered to ensure purity and quality.

The honey is then gently stirred in our VATs and a starter seed added (the honey that has already been creamed where the crystilisation process has been retarded). It is this starter seed that then mixes and turns the batch of honey into thick creamy honey with a smooth and velvety texture- attempting to remove the grainy texture you might find elsewhere.

Samples are taken and sent away for testing to make sure it meets our purity and quality measures before packing it into jars.

Once test results are received the honey is labelled according to its floral source / purity tests. In the case of UMF® Mānuka Honey packed according to its UMF® Grade and a final retention sample is sent away for a release document test result to show the consumer the quality and purity of the honey.

Once final testing and release documents are received, the honey is stored in our ambient chillers, awaiting our happy customers to purchase. We send our products to over 16 countries worldwide through our network of resellers and distributors. Of course, you can also buy our honey right here on our website, or in our two Concept Stores in Auckland and Queenstown and numerous resellers around the country. For a full list see here.

We also have a database where customers can enter their batch information to see their honey's test results- check yours here.