Summer is here and for many beekeepers that means it's time to harvest the honey. For Dargaville apiarist David Whitehead, bee keeping is not only a passion but a career. 

Fascinated by the beehive he received for his 12th birthday, David took bee keeping seriously and, by 18, had turned his hobby into a business.

Now David is the chief executive of Kauri Coast Honey, which operates out of the old powder room of the former Northern Wairoa Dairy Company.An electrical fire had destroyed the earlier honey factory in the old Pono Lodge at Aratapu, but, undaunted, David set up again in the Liverpool St building in 2003.

Business has continued to grow - marketed under its own brand label Nature's Buzz - and the company is a large producer of the highly rated active manuka honey.
The company employs six people full-time with a seasonal influx of another five to six workers over summer for the collecting and processing.

The vast concrete rooms, which once housed stainless-steel milk vats, will soon be piled high with coloured boxes full of trays of honey combs, making the rooms smell sweet.

Thousands of hives are set up in various spots throughout Northland.

The region's native bush and manuka trees are renowned for producing some of the best medically active honey in the world.

Nature's Buzz exports honey as an "added value item" for the making of cough lozenges and in products such as echinacea and propolis.

Propolis and honey is a much sought after supplement in Japan, while a British company processes the 100 per cent natural hand sanitiser - Quash - from Nature Buzz honey.

The beeswax wax is used among other things for furniture polish and by skin cream manufacturers.

For the local market, Nature's Buzz manufactures a "native NZ bush" blend for the table and culinary purposes. It also manufactures "active" honey that can be used for medicinal purposes.

The Active 5-10 plus is seen as great for general health, in particular to help stop winter coughs and colds.

The stronger Active 15-20 plus is good for aiding in the treatment of wounds such as burns, cuts and leg ulcers - on humans and animals.

In 2008, Nature's Buzz won a gold award in the honey section of the UK's Guild of Fine Foods Great Taste Awards in London.

David's daughter Tristan, who has been the marketing manager since 2006, said: "More than 1000 companies from around the world competed so it was a great honour."

Honey is collected in frames from December to March each year and transported back to the factory in Dargaville where it is processed by specialist machinery.

Firstly the wax is capped in the frames and placed in an extractor which spins the frames to separate the wax from the honey.

It is then passed through a series of filters to remove any particles before being packed into the distinctive red-and-gold labelled jars.

Tristan says the initial rating of honey is done by taste and the moisture content is checked to ensure it isn't too high because that would cause it to ferment.

By Annette Lambly of the Northern Advocate