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What Can We Do to Help NZ Bees?

National Beekeepers Association created 'Bee Aware Month', a major campaign designed to educate New Zealanders about the importance of the humble, often overlooked, honey bee. Bees are critically important to New Zealand and to the New Zealand economy – much more so than you might think! Without bees, our gardens would be without many of their plants and flowers, and our major agri-export industries (worth around $5 billion) would be in severe trouble and a huge 2/3 of our food would disa...

September is Bee Aware Month

Bees around the world are in trouble. A world without bees would be a very bleak place indeed. Much of our food depends on pollination by bees as do our gardens and a lot of other products we rely on. Over $5 billion of New Zealand agricultural exports also depend on bees. Bee numbers worldwide are in decline and we must do all that we can to protect them.  Bees are being attacked by a number of major pests and diseases. There are also suffering from a decline in nutritional forage for bees...

Future Scientist?

Thanks to those that have been supporting our son, Matthew's, busking at the Hamilton Farmers Market!  He has been raising money for Malaghan Institute, this is a great cause!  Look out for him because he would like to do some more! ...

A Local's Guide to Great Artisan Food in Waikato

Get a taste of some of the delicious artisan food produced in the Hamilton & Waikato region.  Self-confessed foodie, Vicky Ravlich-Horan chats about her passion for the regions culinary offerings and shows us some of the local award winning food producers from Zealong Tea Estate, Good George Brewery and Sweetree Honey to the Waikato Farmers Markets, Over The Moon Cheese, Viands Bakery, local coffee roasters and more....

Waikato Farming Lifestyles - Sweeter Than Honey

In the May 2014 Waikato Farming Lifestyles has an article on Sweetree Honey - 'One hundred and fifty hives generate a sweet second income stream for boutique Waikato apiarists Martin and Stephanie Lynch of Sweetree Honey.'...

Beehive Update - May 2014

The chilly tendrils of winter are now upon us and I'm pleased to say our bees are in very good shape having come off a great summer.  Most of our hives have at least one good full box of honey stores and our varroa treatment has worked well. No sign of any nasty bee diseases which is also pleasing. The wasps have been epidemic at some of our sites, but don't appear to have done any significant damage to the bees. We put on entrance reducers early this year and what with the fine late summer...

Sweetree Honey on Toast at Ibis

Honey on toast; this humble breakfast enjoyed by millions around the world each morning has taken on new meaning at the Ibis Tainui in Hamilton.Last year Head Chef, Simon Goodchild, was looking for a local honey to offer his guests when he discovered the award winning Sweetree Honey through a simple goggle search.  A visit to the Hamilton Farmers Market confirmed Sweetree were a perfect fit and it wasn’t long before the relationship flourished.As a member of the Accor group Ibis Tainui Ha...

Beehive Update - December 2013

As you may be aware we lost a large number of bee colonies in May due to varroa mite and it's taken a lot of effort to build up hive numbers for this season.  But fortunately we have had a great Spring and we look to be back on track with the prospect of a good season ahead.  Ohui Located near Oputere on the Coromandel, our new apiary site is going well.  This is a great Manuka site and being on the sunny, warm Coromandel, it flowers much earlier than at Marokopa on the West Coast...

Sweetree HaBEEtat Update

Well the grass seed is growing around the pond area and the fence is finally up to protect the plants from wandering stock.  The fencing was quite a big job in the soft soil, at least making sure that the posts were in solid. We put in a 4 wire post fence with electric top and third wire. Nice big wide gates for getting the bees in and out. Here's a photo of the fence going up. The boys are loving the pond area and get down there as much as they can, they call it 'Mud Island'.  They ar...

Sweetree's HaBEEtat - Background and Pond Creation

We live on a 10 acre block just outside of Hamilton.  We purchased it 11 years ago from a well renowned gardener in the Waikato.  The gardens were beautiful.  Unfortunately with starting a family and a business we didn't have enough time to spend on the gardens and they are not in the same state they were back then.  The structure is still there and now that the children are older we are starting to get it back into shape.  Considering we are beekeepers I have felt a lit...

Winter Poem

Autumn retreats, winter slowly drifts on a cloud,He spreads a blanket of icy white snow over the world. He freezes all the trees, the icicles slowly drift down,The animals scatter underground. As the world goes into a deep sleep,Winter flees away as spring unfolds. By Daniel Lynch (age 10)...

Zeald.com - Helping People Realise Their Business Dream

"Having a website has been one of the best things for our business, it has increased our sales revenue, given us access to new geographical areas and it offers convenience for our customers and us".  Stephanie Lynch, Sweetree Honey Originally published in Today Magazine, August 2013...

Victoria St Bistro Serves up More Wild Food

The folks at Victoria Street Bistro have made it into the semi-finals for the Monteith's Wild Food Challenge Awards for the third consecutive year. Victoria Street Bistro's ''Garden of Meat Eatin'' has been judged in the top 18 dishes out of 146 entries from across the country, and is one of only two dishes from Hamilton to make it through. The dish features a number of New Zealand inspired delicacies such as Flaxseed crusted veal sweetbreads, house-cured Pohutukawa smoked wild bacon, earth cook...

Wild Food Challenge

The Monteith’s Wild Food Challenge is a 16 year old tradition where New Zealand bars and restaurants take a stab at creating the ultimate wild food dish matched with a Monteith’s beer or cider.  The wild offerings are judged by our team of experts. They hand pick the semi-finalists to compete in a live cook off!  Victoria St Bistro has created 'Garden of Meat Eatin' which features a number of New Zealand inspired delicacies including Sweetree Bee Pollen. Originally published in the...

Be Friendly To Bees

August is Bee Aware Month and the National Beekeepers Association wants the Government to take threats to bees much more seriously. Bees account for over $5 billion of New Zealand’s economy through honey exports and the pollination of crops. But all wild bees have been wiped out by the varroa mite which is also threatening the rest of our bees. ‘‘The varroa mite is one of the biggest threats facing our Kiwi bees. It has sprea...

Honey of a Job for Stephanie

Honey has provided a sweet opportunity for Stephanie Lynch to be a stay-at-home mum for her two sons, and enjoy the challenges and stimulation of operating a small business....

Tribute to Claude Stratford (Aug 1910 - July 2013)

In August last year we posted a blog on Claude Stratford, one of New Zealand's health pioneers.  On 10 July he passed away, a few weeks from his 103th birthday.With an interest that began as a child, Claude had a life-long affinity with bees and honey. He was 63 when he started the international health product business, Comvita, in 1974 and continued to take an active interest well into his final years. He started making and selling a range of bee products from the basement of his...

Sweetree Receives Highly Commended in Taste Awards

Wahoo!  We have received 'Highly Commended' at the Taste Farmers Market Awards for 2013! Here are the Comments from the Judges: There were hundreds of entries this year and while the judges had their work cut out for them your product certainly stood out.  Your products were judged HIGHLY COMMENDED as the best of the best and stood out as a great example of local produce at a Farmers' Market - the judges were highly impressed.NZ Honey that stings you on the tongue with flavor, the...

Sweetree Interviewed on Radio NZ National

Kathryn Hill interviewed Martin and Stephanie on Nine to Noon on National Radio NZ.  Listen to the interview, 15th July 2013....

Praise Bee – industrious insects get the stamp of approval

They’ve been celebrated in verse (by the likes of Emily Dickinson[1], William Blake[2] and Kahlil Gibran[3]) – in song (by the likes of Gloria Gaynor[4], Blake Shelton[5] and Owl City[6]) – and in popular culture (with spelling bees, ‘Buzzy Bees’ and Wellington’s own ‘Beehive’).  But the humble bee stands poised to get a new tribute this week, with the release of a special set of postage stamps. The Honey Bees stamp issue celebrates the industrious insects on the occasion of...

Sweetree Wins Honey Awards!

At this years National Beekeepers Honey Competition Sweetree Honey was judged second over all!   We also won the following for individual products: Our Hakarimata honey won gold (1st place) in the ‘Beekeepers Special Reserve’ honey competition.  All products are sent in competition standard plastic pottles with no labels.  The honey was judged on colour (15%), cleanliness (15%), aroma (5%), texture/evenness of grain (20%), firmness (15%), flavour (25%) and gener...

Our Little Helpers

It is great now our boys are getting a bit older (eight and ten) and getting more interested in our honey business.  Last week, being school holidays, they came out with us to pack the latest Hakarimata honey.  I was thinking it was going to be hard with them asking how much longer we would be and saying they were bored.  But I was pleasantly surprised!  They worked well for five hours (with morning and and lunch break as well of course) without one complaint!Matthew's job wa...

2013 Season's Honey Harvest

What a great harvest of honey we’ve had this season!  We have a bumper crop of Marokopa Manuka and it has turned out to have an activity of 5+.  We have packed most of the honeys ready for sale, you can see these in our online store.  We have just extracted out Marokopa Summer and Hakarimata honeys and these will be packed over the next month.As you may know, we try to produce honey which is a refection of the great diversity we have here in the Waikato.  Much lik...

Simon Gault Loves Our Honey!

Simon Gault, Chef, TV personality and author was giving a cooking demonstration at Westfield Chartwell about a year ago.  A friend suggested I drop some of our honey to him to try.  So packed up a couple of honeys with a note explaining about us and our honeys and dropped it to Simon's assistant after the demonstration.  I felt a bit nervous. Would you believe that a photo of our 'Four Brothers Reserve' honey is now photographed in Simon's new cookbook 'Homemade'!!!!  We were...

Beehive Update - March 2013

Doesn’t time fly when you are having fun! The season is almost over and many beekeepers will be very happy with their honey crop this year. The hot dry weather has been great for the bees with a lot of honey collected and good conditions for drawing out wax on frames.  Did you notice the white blooms of the native Heketara tree flowering in spring? The last time I saw flowering similar to that was about 5 years ago – when we had the last drought! This has been noticed before by beekeepe...