The Buzz Blog

Welcome to our blog 'The Buzz'. Here we will keep you updated on what is happening in the world of bees and honey and anything else that we think you would be interested in. If there is a topic you would like to hear about drop us an email and I'll see what we can do.

The Buzz Blog Summary

Honey for Allergies

Written by Stephanie on April 25th, 2018. 0 comments

We have many customers that find buying the Sweetree honey variety produced closest to their home beneficial for reducing hay fever symptoms. If you are one of these customers you may find that your normal honey variety is unavailable (due to a very poor honey harvest this season). I would recommend that you try one of our other honeys we have in stock, even if it is a long way from your home. Our honeys are not finely filtered, therefore still retaining a high pollen count, which will help with hay fever. Give it a try and let us know how you get on.

Another option is to take small amounts of bee pollen each day (especially leading up to spring), this can also help descensitize your body against hay fever.

Buy Sweetree Honey with high pollen counts here

Buy Sweetree Bee Pollen here

Topics: Products

A Poor Honey Harvest

Written by Stephanie on April 18th, 2018. 0 comments

You may have heard that honey harvests were poor this season. It is fair to say we had a pretty shocking season. We have harvested about two thirds less honey that we would normally harvest. The Waikato was hit the hardest. Apiary sites that we would typically harvest about 50 boxes of honey from, we harvested just 2-4 boxes. So I'm afraid to say we will not have these honeys available this year - Horsham Downs, Four Brothers, Hakarimata (apart from the batch from last season we still have in stock) and Kirikiriroa.

The good news is that it was a reasonable season at Marokopa so we have Marokopa Spring and Marokopa Manuka and will shortly have Marokopa Summer available. The Marokopa Summer and Marokopa Manuka honeys didn't come easy as there was a freak weather event in Marokopa that swept a huge amout of water through the valley and there were several slips on the sheep station we have our hives on. A lot of the farm tracks collapsed so it made it very tricky getting the honey out, but we did it!

Why Such A Bad Season?

The variable weather at the end of last year and early this year have interrupted the honey flow, and added to this was the severe weather patterns (storms, cyclones,) and then extreme heat. Bees can't fly in strong winds or rain so during those times the bees stay in the hive, therefore reducing their nectar collecting time. The severe weather can strip flowers from trees/plants leaving less flowers for the bees to forage on as well.

The very wet spring appears to have affected clover flowering and nectar production. Even though you may have seen clover flowers this summer, little nectar was produced. Very hot weather can burn summer crops and honey flow virtually stops. The bees end up gathering water, instead of nectar, to try and cool down the hives.

Despite the challenges the bees have come out of the season very healthy and strong, they just haven’t been able to collect a surplus this year. With the season officially over, some of our bees have been treated to a late nectar flow which will keep them going over the winter quite nicely.


One of the many slips in Marokopa	The track had collapsed in many areas	Walking up to check the hives and move by trolly if needed.

Check out what's in season in our honey store

Topics: , About Sweetree, Products