Sweet or sour deal?

In mid-2004, a proposal was announced to merge the two organisations and form the New Zealand Honey Association (NZHA). While there has been a lot of buzz since the announcement, not all in the apiary industry are backing the proposal.

NZ Beekeeping director and current ApiNZ member Jane Lorimer has been involved in the apiary industry for over 30 years. President of ApiNZ precursor organisation National Beekeeping Association from 2002-2007, from when ApiNZ first started to form in the mid 2010s, she felt that ApiNZ had always had troubles with structure and membership.

"At that time a lot of us said we don't really know how apiculture trying to represent everyone from hobby beekeepers, commercial beekeepers, packers and marketers under one umbrella will work because requirements are quite different for beekeepers vs. the marketers," she told Rural News.

Around the same time, Lorimer also joined the Honeybee Society which evolved into the current NZ Beekeeping organisation.

Tom Walters, director of the NZ Honey Export Group and Australian Manuka Honey Association, Maori Research Institute CEO and ApiNZ member, is another significant voice against this proposed restructure. He has claimed that conflict of interests between industry leaders sitting on multiple boards and vague submissions processes have left ordinary beekeepers shut out.

"I'm with grassroots beekeepers on a daily basis and they don't really understand the complications involved in this proposed merger, but they could be very detrimental to those very people who don't understand."

Lorimer corroborates these statements, saying that UMFHA beekeeper colleagues of hers remain unsure of details.

"We're told that ApiNZ and UMFHA are going to have their special meetings, but the detail has not come out. They've got an overview of where they'd like to go, but how it's going to get there, I think they don't really know themselves.

"If I was a member of UMFHA I would be saying 'our role is to protect our UMF brand. We have spent so much money in doing this that we don't want it to be diluted by doing other activities'."

As previously reported in Rural News, one of the goals of the prospective NZHA would be to double the value of honey exports by 2030. However, with a downturn in honey returns since 2017, partially attributed to a glut of supply and falling demand, there have been concerns that the needs of beekeepers are being pushed aside to shore up the value of honey exporters.

Lorimer points to the value of bees as pollinators, either in horticulture or seed production, as integral to New Zealand's predominantly agricultural economy.

"Pollination is really our biggest role as beekeepers," she says. "Whether that is in paid horticultural pollination or seed production, as well as the unpaid colonisation that our bees do on clover. Without bees, our economy would suffer greatly."

"They have stated in their proposed strategy that UMFHA in the new entity will concentrate on exports and manuka. That is basically going to lead to beekeepers looking for a new voice for governance."

Particularly drawing the ire of Walters and Lorimer was a statement in the draft constitution that would seek out wider honey industry levies, mandatory for member (UMF levy) and non-member alike (manuka levy).

"It's anti-competitive," says Walters. "UMF has, one way or another, always tried to convince the industry that we should be on board and pay them for this extra quality they claim is important to the industry.

"Wherever we are, we still have to go through very rigorous MPI quality control. Those tests are not cheap. UMFHA are charging us for something we already do."

Jane Lorimer

Funding Issue

Jane Lorimer points out that with the industry at perhaps its lowest point in recent memory with oversupply, low pricing and varroa infestations, individual beekeepers' funds are low.

"Anything that we are levied on needs to be well considered and targeted for all to contribute. Whether that's possible at the moment, I don't think so, and it remains to be seen in the future whether we can get something done that will fund the industry reasonably well," she told Rural News.

In the past, Kiwi manuka honey industries have attempted to sue Australian producers over the rights to the name manuka honey. While broadly unsuccessful, wording in a new press release implies that the new organisation will continue to put resources towards these legal battles; with the costs passed on to producers.

"The result of the manuka court case was so glaringly obvious about what was going on; a few people being downright greedy and trying to up the value of manuka honey," opined Tom Walters.

He says the Manuka Charitable Trust and Te Pitau received a grant from the government to challenge the manuka honey court case.

"All those expenses to me seem to be going in the wrong direction for the wrong purposes."

Lorimer says that while exporters trying to have the best sales at least expense is perfectly standard business practice, "[current practices] are bringing the beekeepers to a point where it's not sustainable for us at the moment because costs have increased so incredibly, but our returns have gone down".

Walters says he only wants to make high-value manuka honey more affordable to wider markets. "Make it better and expende more in research rather than more in paying levies which is what UMFHA do."

While Walters sits on the Australian Manuka Honey Association as a director, he says his loyalties are to New Zealand interests and Maori rights in particular.

"On the AMHA board, the only area that I address is around working better with New Zealand. I try to divorce myself from everything else.

"In terms of my allegiance to NZ, I think if you just look at our landholdings and the work I do for Maori land access for beekeeping, my allegiance is pretty strong to NZ beekeepers."

ApiNZ didn't wish to comment while UMFHA comment wasn't received in time for this article.