A Bee (keeper’s) Life
Did you know that it takes one million flowers to make a jar of honey? Our hard working bees produce honey from the nectar of all kinds of flowers but once a year, for just a few short weeks, they collect nectar exclusively from our native Mānuka bush to make our most exclusive and prized honey. We sat down with our very own Me Today beekeeper Trent Hopwood to ask all our stinging questions about bees and our Me Today Mānuka honey!
What is honey made from?
Nectar! Nectar is produced by flowers which helps attract bees. While collecting nectar, pollen gets stuck on the bees so as they visit different flowers, the bees actually end up pollenating them. Worker bees collect nectar and deposit it in combs in the hive where it is cured. We beekeepers then extract the honeycombs and remove the honey using a machine that gently spins the honey out without damaging the comb so it can be returned to the hives.
How long does it take to make honey?
To make one 250g jar of honey we need the nectar of around 1 million flowers. Considering it takes 12 worker bees their whole lifetime to make a single teaspoon of honey, it’s a big hive effort. It’s worth noting that the Mānuka bush only flowers for 2 - 6 weeks per year so all our Mānuka honey is actually produced in a very short window. Outside the Mānuka season, our bees continue to forage on other seasonal flowers. This provides Me Today with different varieties of honey, but also allowing bees to have a year-round food supply. We’re not the only ones who like honey – our bees eat it too! That’s why we ensure that we leave enough honey in the hives so the bees enjoy the natural goodness of honey too. In a good year a happy hive can produce up to 50kg of honey so there is plenty to go around!
At 1 million flowers per jar, how do you know your bees are only collecting Mānuka nectar?
We spend a lot of time testing and analysing the land surrounding our hives. We take our hives to some very isolated, rugged terrain where only Mānuka bush flowers. Sometimes we even need to transport the hives by helicopter – that’s how remote we’re talking. Bees have a great sense of smell and only collect one type of nectar at a time so once they begin collecting Mānuka nectar, they stick to it for the whole day. We also extensively test our honey for unique Mānuka honey markers to guarantee its high quality.
What makes Mānuka honey so special?
While all honey is good in our opinion, not all honey is created equal and pure Mānuka honey is something special. Methylglyoxal or MGO is the component of Mānuka honey that sets it apart from other more common bush or multifloral honeys. While all honey is antibacterial due to its natural hydrogen peroxide activity, Mānuka honey has this extra Unique Mānuka Factor which gives it additional antibacterial properties. We measure lots of different markers in our honey, but MGO helps tell you how potent your Mānuka honey is. We always test our honey extensively in internationally accredited laboratories to measure the amount of MGO and produce certified UMF™ rated honey.
What’s your favourite way to use Mānuka honey?
We use Mānuka honey for anything from on toast to marinades, but a favourite of mine is to drizzle it on oats with berries as a superfood-packed breakfast.
See Trent’s Overnight Breakfast Oats recipe below:
Ingredients:
½ cup oats
½ skim milk (almond milk works great too)
2 heaped tablespoons plain, unsweetened Greek yoghurt
Handful of your favourite berries
2 teaspoons Me Today Mānuka honey
Add oats to your container of choice. Pour over milk, dollop on yoghurt and top with berries.
Drizzle with Me Today Mānuka honey.
Refrigerate overnight ( at least 8 hours) and enjoy for a great start to your morning.
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