Country

New Zealand

New Zealand's honey story joins strict provenance science with unusually distinctive native landscapes. Mānuka honey is defined for export by the Ministry for Primary Industries using a laboratory test based on four chemical markers plus mānuka pollen DNA. In the South Island, native beech forests support a completely different product: honeydew created by sap-feeding scale insects on beech bark and collected by introduced Apis mellifera. New Zealand's managed honey bees are themselves introduced—the first documented introduction dates to 1839—so HC separates the introduced Bee from the native plants and insects that make many New Zealand honeys unique.