Family in tune with bees’ needs

In the past decade the gentle art of beekeeping and honey making has been transformed into something of a Wild West experience for many throughout New Zealand .

WORDS BY RICHARD RENNIE, IMAGES BY TANIA NIWA

The lure of high manuka honey prices has pushed the number of hives up to unsustainable numbers, putting pressure upon bee populations and the beekeepers tasked with looking after them. One Taranaki family has however managed to step aside from the whirlwind impact of manuka honey goldrush, keeping firm to their values of sustainable, healthy hives and good relations with landowners. Sonia and Bryon Bluett and their son Isaac, the owners of Eltham Honey, are seeing the family honey business ease into its third generation of ownership from the family’s base in south Taranaki. In many respects the most remarkable thing about the third-generation succession is how similar the business is to the one Sonia’s parents Trevor and Gay Rowe started back in 1965. “Dad had always had something of a passion for bees and beekeeping, and it soon came to be that I never knew anything else other than beekeeping as our family business,” says Sonia. But the family had started off dairying on the block. When compelled to seek more finance for the farm business, Trevor and Gay had been turned down by the Rural Bank and faced the possibility of losing the farm. “Dad sold the dairy herd in order to keep the land, only to find TSB would lend him the money, just as the cows went out the gate.” But rather than getting the herd back, Trevor committed to his beekeeping passion, built a honey house on the property and business began with the first honey being sold in the autumn of 1965. With that came Sonia’s lifelong association with bees and honey, and she still recalls the front of the family home being converted into a honey shop, and her selling honey from the age of 12. “At the time there were only two large beekeepers in Taranaki, at Mania and Okato. They were all good mates and kept an eye out on each other’s hives and worked with a MAF beekeeping officer, it was quite different to how things are today,” says Sonia. Ever the capable ex-dairy farmer, Trevor took his farm handyman skills to the beekeeping enterprise, making all their own honey frames, hives and equipment, something that Sonia, Bryon and Isaac continue to do today. Meeting Bryon, an electrician for Kiwi Dairy Coop, proved to be timely for both him and Sonia. Years of shift work, repairing and “band aiding” equipment in the dairy factory was wearing thin for Bryon who was keen to commit not only to Sonia as his wife, but to a business he had some say over and would prove more rewarding. “Sonia’s Dad had a sore back one year and I took some of the summer holidays to work moving hives for him, and thoroughly enjoyed it. He did say to me that if I wanted to go out with his daughter, I had to do some time on the bees!” “I enjoyed the work. You may feel physically stuffed at the end of the day, but you also felt you had something to show for your day’s work,” says Bryon. Bryon had been asked by friend to think about what he wanted and where he wanted life to take him and beekeeping seemed the natural, enjoyable answer to that. “So, in 1995 we took over the business from Trevor and Gay, knowing just what we were getting into and how the business can have a varying income level year to year, depending upon honey flow,” says Bryon. To this day they agree it was the best decision they ever made. “Working for yourself and being in charge of your destiny, despite the lack of guaranteed income, is very worthwhile,” says Bryon. Taking over from Trevor, Bryon and Sonia worked alongside him for a few years initially running 900 hives and lifting numbers to 1,400. But following Trevor’s sudden death in 2000 and the creeping impact of the varroa mite invasion, they stepped hive numbers down and today run between 700–850. The products the family specialise in today do not differ too much from when Trevor started

ABOVE: Isaac’s move into the family business fulltime alongside his parents Byron and Sonia, is ensuring Eltham Honey has good prospects for the next half century BELOW: The Bluett’s have a focus on keeping firm to their values of sustainable, healthy hives and good relations with landowners

the business. “We have a good niche in the comb honey business, which is very popular with the Japanese export market, and also with tourists when they were coming here. We also do good volumes of bulk honey, and bees’ wax products.” While manuka honey is the high-profile product for the industry that has drawn more beekeepers than ever to the trade, the Bluett’s have kept it as only a small portion of their business, accounting for less than 20% of their operation. The bulk of their honey type consists of clover honey, combination pasture honey and a bush honey that includes a combination of kamahi, rewarewa and manuka. Sonia says her father would be bemused at the profile manuka has gained in recent years, given 25 years ago it was produced to feed bees with, rather than being a harvested honey. “It is ironic when you see more and more manuka scrub being planted, when I can distinctly recall it being cut out from farms all those years ago.” Isaac’s move into the family business fulltime is ensuring Eltham Honey has good prospects for the next half century. A love of timber work had him working as a furniture maker apprentice locally, but increasingly bought a sense he was “just a cog in the machine”. “I overheard Mum and Dad talking one day about how they were looking at wrapping up the business and interrupted them to ask if I might be able to be part of it, rather than them selling it.” His only hesitancy came from knowing he was sensitive to bee stings, with one leaving him knocked out cold and in anaphylactic shock when he had been out among the hives with Bryon. But undergoing a treatment programme at Auckland hospital has meant Isaac has become effectively immunised to stings, and he gets a regular top up injection to maintain the immunity. Sonia and Bryon gave him a 12-month trial in the business just to ensure he was as keen as he thought he was, and his reasons for staying echo those of Bryon’s 30 years earlier. “I enjoy the physicality of the work and coming home feeling tired for having done something that has very real results at the end of it,” says Isaac. For Isaac one of the most satisfying aspects of the day’s work is opening up a hive to find a strong healthy golden comb with healthy bees busy within. His love of woodwork is not lost despite his change in career, with his skills invaluable in keeping the family tradition of making their own hives and frames alive. Isaac’s participation has also prompted the family to undergo a recent re-branding exercise, renaming the business “Eltham Honey” rather than “Eltham Apiaries”. “Most younger people don’t know what apiaries are, so it was worthwhile redoing our brand and website,” says Sonia. The family focus strongly on keeping the business in tune with the very seasonal, environmentally dependent nature of honey production and bee health. As a student of Trevor’s methods, Bryon has kept much of what he learnt from him in play. “Trevor was a bit unorthodox in his approach, and I have stuck with that. Like Trevor, I believe hives are designed to be part of their environment, and to stay within the environment they are in, rather than being moved around which many beekeepers do now to extend the hive’s production,” says Bryon. They only move a very small proportion of their hives during the season, with the bee populations tuning into their locale, remaining settled and healthy as a result. “We hear from farmers about how unhappy they get with some beekeepers moving their

ABOVE: For Isaac one of the most satisfying aspects of the day’s work is opening up a hive to find a strong healthy golden comb with healthy bees busy within BELOW LEFT: The bulk of the Bluett’s honey consists of clover honey, combination pasture honey and a bush honey that includes a combination of kamahi, rewarewa and manuka BELOW RIGHT: Sonia holds the diary her dad Trevor wrote from teenage years, documenting the bees