What the Industry Does - Products and Services

Honey has always been the most important New Zealand beekeeping product. However, in the last decade other products and services have become important sources of additional income to the nation's beekeepers. Pollination fees and the export of live bees are the two most important areas of this industry diversification.

Honey - "Nature's Own Sweet"

New Zealand's variety of native floral sources, combined with a number of introduced pasture and wild species, have created a unique range of honey types and flavours. Beekeepers have always been quick to identify and market these honeys, and now specific sources such as South Island honeydew, manuka, thyme and ling heather attract premium prices overseas. Other significant export honey products include comb honey, high-moisture honey, honey and fruit spreads, and very light-coloured honey (0-9mm on the Pfund honey grading scale).

About one third of New Zealand's annual production is exported, with the remainder sold as creamed and liquid spreads in retail supermarkets and food specialty shops. There is also a growing use of honey in the food manufacturing industry, with many leading companies keen to exploit the natural goodness of honey as a food ingredient in their products. New Zealanders are enthusiastic users of honey by world standards, consuming on average approximately 1.5 kg per person each year.

Honey production for the 1992-93 season totalled 7086 tonnes, or approximately 23 kg per hive. This compares to a six year average of 7698 tonnes (24 kg/hive). However, honey production is very weather dependant, and yields in the same six year period ranged between 17 kg/hive (1988-89) and 31 kg/hive (1991-92).

Pollination - "The Sparkplug of Agriculture"

In the last 15 years, New Zealand growers have realised that high quality pollination is essential to the efficient production of a number of their horticultural and agricultural crops. Beekeepers currently hire over 90,000 hives each year for pollination purposes, with the vast majority (an estimated 81,000 hives) being placed in kiwifruit. There is also a growing use of paid pollination services in the apple industry, with lesser crops such as berryfruit, squash and seed crops also benefiting from the controlled use of honey bees. Pollination services are estimated to be worth over $8.8 million annually to the beekeeping industry.

The unpaid pollination work honey bees do has an even greater benefit to the New Zealand agricultural system. Crops directly relying on bee pollination are worth over $1.2 billion per year, while pollination of pasture legumes provides more than $1.87 billion worth of nitrogen each year to the country's soils. Because it is impossible to identify a direct beneficiary for much of this pollination, some people mistakenly assume that this input does not have a value. However, agricultural economists worldwide now agree that the value of honey bees to the environment is worth up to 100 times the value of the actual honey and bee products they directly produce.

Queens and Bulk Bees - "Livestock on the Wing"

The export of live bees has been a significant development in the New Zealand beekeeping industry in recent years. Producers in this country supply "packages" of worker bees and a queen to stock hives in the northern hemisphere spring. Specialist queen producers also raise queen bees which are used for hive increase and replacement of overwintered queens, both in New Zealand and overseas. Currently the main markets for package bees are in Canada, Korea and the Mideast, while queen bees are shipped to countries as geographically and culturally diverse as Israel, the United Kingdom and Japan.

New Zealand has an enviable reputation for both the quality and disease-free nature of its honey bee stocks. This has recently been recognised in the United States, where negotiations are currently under way to allow replacement stocks from New Zealand into areas being overtaken by the Africanised bee.

For the 1993 calendar year, package bees and queens were exported from New Zealand with an estimated total value of $1,783,585 FOB.

Health Products - "The Natural Alternative"

A number of other products produced by bees are gaining in popularity, both in New Zealand and world-wide. Most significant is royal jelly, which is prized by Asian peoples as a tonic and restorative. Royal jelly is secreted by a special gland in the bodies of nurse bees, and is the high protein food fed to developing queen bee larvae. Royal jelly is processed into a variety of forms, including capsules, tablets and cosmetics. Approximately $3,000,000 of the product is sold in New Zealand, much of it imported from overseas.

Propolis is also being used in a range of natural health care products, mostly due to its reputed properties as an antibiotic. Propolis is the bee-collected secretions of plants which is used as a glue and preservative in the hive. Several tonnes of propolis are collected each year by beekeepers and sold to heath products manufacturers.

Pollen has traditionally been collected from bees and used as a protein food supplement. Three to four tonnes are produced each year and sold either as raw pollen, or in combination with other materials.

Beeswax is another important by-product of honey production. Much of it is recycled by beekeeping supply houses and processed into comb foundation, which is used by beekeepers. However, another 150 to 200 tonnes is exported each year for use in cosmetics and candles.

Beekeeping Supplies - "Helping the Industry Do Its Work"

A variety of companies make equipment for the New Zealand beekeeping industry, including hive woodware, honey-processing machinery and honey containers. A substantial amount of this manufacture is also exported, and New Zealand has gained a reputation overseas for its high quality and innovative beekeeping supplies.

NZ Beekeeping Profile: Table of Contents

NZ Beekeeping: Appendices

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