It’s been another busy season at Avatar Honey and thankfully the honey gods have smiled upon us this season. The hives all produced a bountiful crop of high quality, high activity, monofloral manuka honey. The manuka blossom intensity was tremendous and we were fortunate to have fine and hot settled weather during the nectar flow.
Hello Honey Lovers, it’s been a while since we’ve given you an update on what we’ve been doing at Avatar, as we’ve been head down, sting up working tirelessly to get the most out of the honey season. Now as it draws to a close, we can relax a bit…and give you some insights into what happened during the season.
Wow, what happened? We ponder this question as we sit here after what was a terrible season, looking at our pathetic harvest. All the beekeepers up and down the country tell a tale of the same woes. A perfect-storm situation for a low yield crop -shocking weather right from mid spring to late summer, rain, wind, and cold. Queen bees didn’t get mated in spring, manuka flowering was weaker than normal, bees sheltered in their hives during the nectar flow and what nectar flow there was, got washed from the manuka blossom by the rain. Bugger! Thankfully, we have stocks of manuka, maturing from previous seasons and from our experience a great year usually follows a bad one. It allows us time to reflect and prepare for 2018 season. Bring it on! On a very positive note, Avatar’s new labels look incredible! It really captures the essence of the brand and brings a structured hierarchy to our honey portfolio. Thanks to the team at Gregory Studio for all the hard work in pulling this off. MPI keeps pushing out the release date of the NZ government’s new manuka honey definition/standard, so we have had to push on and print the labels without knowing what changes we will need to make following MPI’s release of the new definition. But the show must go on… Finally, we are working on some new exciting honey products to add to our portfolio…watch this space!
We have just brought in the hives for 2015 to their wintering sites and wow what a year. We have had an amazing season! All our bees are healthy and we really couldn't have asked for anything more. We’ve got a lot of honey this year, it’s just been magical. For the few of you who have had the chance to get your hands on our 2013/14 honey you will be pleased to know we are now only about a year away from releasing our retail stocks of Avatar manuka to the world. It’s been a fantastic ten plus year journey beekeeping and we are very excited to now be moving from wholesale into the retail market. With how the manuka honey market has just kept growing, our decision to hold back and come to market with the best manuka honey, is really looking like its going to be well worth the effort. We are still seeing manuka honey prices worldwide skyrocketing and demand increasing every year, helped by celebrity endorsements and the never ending public praise for manuka honey. It looks like its going to be an exciting few years. Just want to take a moment to thank the team at Avatar. They are all working hard behind the scene to get everything ready for our transition from the local New Zealand wholesale market into the worldwide retail markets. Who would have guessed 10 years ago, we would here now with our stunning new website and heading overseas for food expos and introducing Avatar Manuka Honey to the world?
