A Timaru honey producer has won the supreme honey award for the third year in a row.

Jarved Allen from the Mānuka Collective took home the supreme award at the at the Apiculture NZ conference in Rotorua at the end of June.

The Washdyke-based company, under production operations manager Jarved Allen, also took home the best mānuka honey award for the third time in four years and collected an impressive total of five gold awards, three silver and two bronze.

“It is always an honour to receive an award, but it was really rewarding to get the award for the third time in a row,” said Allen.

This year was more challenging – the standard of the honey had improved and there was a lot more competition this year, he said.

“It’s good to finish on a high note. I always said this would be my last crack at it (the competition).”

Allen started out in the honey industry in Timaru 20 years ago, and is grateful to Steve Lyttle and Carolyn Bell who shared their expertise with him.

Allen said he had a real passion for creating honey blends – and really got a feel for that 10 years ago.

“We’re not afraid to blend from different regions,” he said.

The Mānuka Collective uses honey from its Hamilton-based partner company and also sources honey from independent apiarists around New Zealand. The honey is blended to create a more consistent New Zealand blend for the international market, Allen said.

Carlee McCaw and Tim Sinclair from Milburn Honey Farm in Otago took home one gold, one silver and two bronze awards.

Simon Aarts from Coalgate Honey in Canterbury got one gold and one bronze, while Otago-based Marsh’s Honey got a gold award and Dale Honey a silver.

The National Honey Competition, held before the conference, featured products across a range of honey categories from creamed honey to chunky honey and cut honeycomb.

Head judge Maureen Conquer said the quality of honey had improved again this year.

All entries were blind-tasted, and an international scale of points used to determine the winners across 10 main categories - with only a few points separating the top three entrants.

A selection of less common varieties were included in the tasting for the People’s Choice award including avocado, lavender, willow and Spanish heather honeys.

Kaimai Range Honey’s Jody Mitchell produced the crowd favourite in this category.

Glasson Apiaries, based in Blackball on the West Coast, received the ApiNZ Sustainability Best Practice Award.

Gary Glasson said the business, started by his grandfather in 1924, runs 1200 hives within a 70km radius of home.

His son Samuel joined this apiary full-time about 18 months ago. The business has been going for almost a century over four generations, Glasson said.

“We’re really stoked to win this award as a small business. Beekeeping has seen some highs in recent years and is now going through some tough times with a lot of people leaving the industry. Honey prices, excluding mānuka honey, had gone from $12 to $4 now was no back around $6.50 to $7.”

Economic sustainability comes first otherwise there is no business - and that usually ties in with environmental sustainability, he said.

“Having the apiaries close to home means less time sitting in trucks using fuel and more time looking after the bees. We’re always looking to improve producing more with less.

“I’m a believer that the family farm or small business is always going to be good for the local community and the country. We all want to leave it in a good place for the next generation to carry on and be successful,” Glasson said.

The Roy Paterson award for innovation went to another sustainably-produced product – the Kōpani pallet cover. The hemp-fibre cover created by Stuart Fraser of Natural Sugars reduces the reliance on plastic for wrapping hives.

The Unsung Hero Award went to a trio of busy bees from Gisborne this year, Barry Foster, John Mackay and Steve Jackson, for their support of beekeepers in their region following Cyclone Gabrielle.

Rotorua-based forest entomologist Stephanie Sopow was awarded the Peter Molan trophy for exceptional contribution to apiculture science.

Sopow has been leading work on the biological control of giant willow aphid. The arrival of the aphid in New Zealand has affected host trees and seen bees and wasps start to harvest the aphid honeydew.

by Sharon Davis