Description
Rich and velvety, Kānuka Honey contains golden caramel notes. Not to be confused with its sister, Mānuka - it is sourced from the New Zealand tea tree. Raglan Apiaries Honey is raw and pure so it retains its goodness from the hive to your home. Harvested in New Zealand, their products are sweet, nourishing and of the highest natural quality.
Bevan and Sharnelle's Story
We are a small local business with 30 hives in two beautiful, secluded locations in the serene New Zealand countryside. Our honey is made from nectar from a variety of native plants with really nutrient dense soil. One of our sites is situated on the edge of an extinct volcano by the coast where centuries of ocean spray falls softly on the plants and ground giving our coastal honey's a salted caramel like flavor. These sites are our bees' permanent homes, we do not chase Manuka or other types of honey. Rather, we let the bees do as they please, which is why our honey varies each season.
Director and beekeeper Bevan has been dabbling in the world of bees since 2006, straight after finishing high school. He has studied and observed bees (native, honey and bumble), micro climates where the bees are situated and a variety of flora, to gain insights into their characteristics, habits and needs. His passion for bees grew the hobby into a semi-commercial business with 30 hives at 2 locations.
Managing partner Sharnelle is an apprentice beekeeper, she has worked with the bees for one season and is enthusiastic to learn more and figure out how to make the bees as strong and healthy as possible. She is the face of the business: working directly with customers, expanding our clientele and stock locations, facilitating trainings and raising public awareness about sustainable beekeeping.
We stand behind each and every jar of honey that we sell. Being a small business gives us the unique perspective of knowing exactly where our honey comes from. We partner with like minded small businesses to supplement our honey supply to ensure we meet customer demand without impacting the health of our bees. We lab test each drum of honey before we package it to ensure its quality and to identify Kanuka chemical markers. We also have an in-house lab that we use to test honey against candida yeast, fungi and bacteria. The purpose of this is to see what potential our honey has to help heal and improve people's health.
Philosophies
We love our bees and care about sustainable beekeeping, in summer when we harvest honey we leave the bees with enough for themselves to make it through winter. This creates strong resilient hives that are much more capable of defending themselves against enemies and fighting off mites and viruses. New Zealand law states that honey removed from the hive cannot be fed back to the bees, therefore hives that are stripped of all their honey are fed sugar water. This is not what nature intended for bees to eat, but unfortunately it is the reality for many bees in a profit driven world. We only feed sugar water to our bees out of necessity, when they have consumed all their winter stores and there aren't enough food sources nearby to sustain them.
When securing a permanent site for our hives we check the surrounding area to determine that there is a variety of nutritious food sources and fresh water for our bees. Just as importantly we are looking to provide food security for our bees by ensuring that there is not an over abundance of other hives in the area. Over population of bees (called hive dumping) leads to fighting over food sources, spreading of viruses and mites, robbing and starvation.
We strive to produce delicious nutrient dense honey, which is why we keep our honey raw and do not heat it above hive temperature when packaging it. You will notice our honey is thick and creamy. Kanuka honey is very thick when in the honey comb, similar to the consistency of jam, we cream all our honey to ensure its longevity and to stop rapid crystallization.
Our goal for Raglan Apiaries is to bring sustainable beekeeping and pollinator well-being to the forefront of the community and to showcase the beneficial characteristics of raw New Zealand bush and coastal honey. We are passionate about the land, flora and water and the life it provides for all inhabitants, including us. It is our life long quest to ensure this continues and thrives, we feel that all pollinators are something that we need to closely look at due to the importance they hold in our ecology.
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