Bees are saving birds in a native bush sanctuary in Raetihi in the central North Island.
Beekeeper and founder of Manunui Honey, Blake Cole, is also an ardent conservationist who monitors kiwi, and traps and eradicates pests.
Manunui, which means 'plentiful birds', is the name given to 250 hectares of restored native bush that provides sanctuary to a wide variety of New Zealand native birds, including the North Island brown kiwi.
Cole tells Nine to Noon profits from Manunui Honey are invested into returning more of the land to native bush and that the way his honey is extracted and harvested is carried out in the most natural way possible, bringing unique benefits to the honey's quality.
Cole says he got into bee-keeping by default in 2016. He purchased his native bush block with the original intention to look after it and protect it, but needed to find a way to finance that, figuring bee-keeping to be a good option. He wanted to run the business ethically, ensuring his bee-keeping didn’t impact detrimentally on the land.
“I just went through some life changes and decided to make some big decisions on what’s important in my life and found that buying a piece of native bush and looking after it was the best thing for me personally," he says.
"Getting into the bees was something I was passionate about. I’ve always enjoyed working with animals and bees were the obvious choice."
He started off networking, getting to know some beekeepers around the country and learning from them. After completing a beekeeping course, he purchased a few hives and slowly built up more as he become more confident using the skills he had picked up.
He uses a holistic approach with the bees, making sure that they are healthy and disease-free.
“Unfortunately, will have a number of introduced pests. It means that bees can no longer survive on their own in New Zealand. We’re talking about western honey bees, not our standard native species," he says.
"So, there are certain things we have to do. I have to go into the hives and doing regular disease checks. We’ve also got to be treating the bees if they have any of those diseases.”
He uses organic treatments rather than chemicals to address problem, which he says are more hands on.
Making sure the bees have enough food is another priority.
“A lot of commercial bee-keepers in New Zealand and around the world take all the honey and feed back their bees sugar syrup… trying to get the bees to survive on just that and they really don’t do well. So we don’t feed them that at all.”
Instead he only harvests if there’s a surplus. Some years, if there aren’t good nectar sources there isn’t a surplus, so no honey is taken. He says he does things as naturally as possible so all the benefits end up in the jar.
He uses a hand-powered honey extractor, and spinner, forcing the honey out into a bottom tank, running it through a small filter, leaving it in a bucket so the surplus wax can sit on the top. Then the wax is removed, and the honey is poured into vat.
The flavour is enhanced by the process and it allows substances like propolis - a compound produced by bees from the buds of flowers thought to fight infections and heal wounds – to remain in the honey.
“The bigger operations have all mechanical extraction equipment," he says. "With the mechanical operations the honey needs to be heated so it flows more freely and is able to pass through the filtration system. We don’t do that at all. Heating the honey destroys a lot of its natural properties.”
Having propolis, a sought-after benefit product, in the honey is a major point of difference for his products.
Products are split between manuka and non-manuka.
His bush honey is an early season product, with lemonwood and various other native trees giving the honey a unique flavour profile.
“Because it’s sourced from so many different nectar profiles, it’s really robust and every season’s different. So, some years certain flowers, certain trees flower better than others, so it changes season to season. But predominantly, we have such a high ratio of rewa rewa in our forest and it just a nice rich-bodied flavour."
The manuka pollen flow is from late January to the end of February and because of the dryness of the land, clover flowers and other paddock pollen is scarce, giving the honey a powerful taste. “The flavour is quite strong – it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, pure manuka,” he says.
Manuka honey has come a long way since before its profile was raised commercially as a health food. It was an in-season honey that was fed back to the bees by many beekeepers, he says.
