First jars of Botanic Gardens honey go on sale

You love the Botanic Gardens and now you can taste its honey, made by bees with a feast of flowers to choose from.

Botanic Gardens staff asked registered bee keeper David Spice to install hives at different locations around the Gardens, including one near the Curator’s House that is easy for visitors to see.

Botanic Gardens team leader Bede Nottingham with some jars of the Garden's own honey.

The number of hives was increased last summer from two to six and for the first time Mr Spice has harvested enough honey from Botanic Gardens hives for it to be sold commercially. The honey has been put into jars and is on sale at the Visitor Centre gift shop.

Gardens Visitor Centre team leader Wendy Drew says the goal was to produce pure Botanic Gardens honey that could be purchased as a unique gift. “You can’t get a product more directly related to the Gardens than this.”

It was also a way of helping to boost fragile bee populations in the Gardens and around the city. “We feel that we’re doing our part. It’s helping the bees, the Gardens, and the whole cycle of pollination.”

Mr Spice says the Botanic Gardens is an excellent location for hives. “We’re very lucky because it isn’t a place where everything flowers at once.”

He has tasted the honey and says it has a light, multi-floral flavour. “I think it’s fantastic. We had a tasting when I extracted the first lot and we all thought it was great. It’s got a lovely flavour, it’s mild but it has a nice strength to it.”

Mr Spice, who is a chef tutor at the Ara Institute of Canterbury, monitors the Botanic Gardens hives every few weeks and treats them for varroa mite.

In the winter one hive will hold about 8 to 10,000 bees but this swells to 60 to 70,000 during the summer.

The first batch of honey was taken from the Gardens at the end of March and it is not heat treated.

“We bring the honey up to the temperature of the hive and then we extract it. It’s sieved once and we put it in the jar and that’s it. With a lot of honey, they heat it right up and skim the wax off. This will have fine elements of wax so it’s a very natural kind of product.”

Mr Spice says the number of bee keepers is increasing around the country as people realise the benefits of boosting bee populations devastated by the varroa mite.

He says bees are essential to our food system and our ecosystem and having bees in the neighbourhood leads to a 20 per cent increase in pollination.