There are signs numbers are starting to rebuild as honey prices improve.<\/p>\n
Liam Gavin\u2019s family has been running beehives in Northland for four generations, since 1912.<\/p>\n
Based near Whang\u0101rei, he runs up to 1200 hives solely focused on m\u0101nuka production.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a large oversupply of honey sitting in sheds around the country for the last five years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cExports are going really well, which has essentially cleared those sheds. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo there\u2019s no longer that large excess of honey that\u2019s been sitting around, and it\u2019s now flipped \u2013 the demand for it is quite heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gavin said last year was one of their biggest years in terms of export volumes.<\/p>\n
He said renewed confidence in honey production is seeing some pivot away from pollination.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sort of describe it as the tug of war between honey and pollination.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth are needing more beehives. So which one, where are they going to go? And that\u2019ll all be down to, like, region-specific [stuff], and what people like to do in terms of how they beekeep.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Incorporated chief executive Colin Bond said it was not a new challenge for the industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a direct relationship between what\u2019s happening in the honey industry versus how many hives are available for pollination.\u201d<\/p>\n
With honey prices coming back up, Bond expected more beekeepers would prioritise honey over pollination, which would create a challenge for kiwifruit growers.<\/p>\n
He said with the industry\u2019s aspirations to grow \u2013 Zespri predicts it could grow by 400ha per year \u2013 even more beehives would be needed for pollination in future.<\/p>\n
He encouraged growers to get in touch about beehives early to understand where the gaps might be.<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are signs numbers are starting to rebuild as honey prices improve. Liam Gavin\u2019s family has been running…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[95,806,72948,138,4190,12252,25689,33213,2454,23553,111,139,69,21411,10042,25690,8238],"class_list":["post-490927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-and","tag-as","tag-beehives","tag-business","tag-demand","tag-expands","tag-gianina","tag-honey","tag-industry","tag-kiwifruit","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pressure","tag-rises","tag-schwanecke","tag-under"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}