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Manawa Honey NZ - Manuka & Wild Forest Honey Production Specialist

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Manawa Honey NZ - Manuka & Wild Forest Honey Production Specialist

We produce world award-winning Mānuka, Rewarewa and other wild forest honeys from Te Urewera forest. Manawa means Heart. Manawa - Honey From The Heart…

We’re based in Ruatahuna, Te Manawa-o-Te-Ika, The Heart of Māui’s Fish, which was pulled up by our ancestor Māui eons ago, and is now the North Island of New Zealand. A special place that produces special honeys. Manawa Honey NZ was founded by the Tuhoe Tuawhenua Trust which aims to sustainably manage the land and resources of our region for the benefit of current and future generations. We initiated our honey business to sustain our people with jobs and good health, and to keep bees for what they do for our place and this planet. We started keeping bees in 2011 and have slowly built our business over these years focusing on developing our people in the jobs that we have created in our integrated operation from ‘land to brand’, from beekeeping to marketing. Meaningful jobs in a business big enough to give our people real careers. We specialise in producing exquisite wild forest honeys from the vast pristine forests of Te Urewera – homeland of our tribe Tūhoe. Our varietals are: magical Mānuka, top-tasting Rewarewa, and rare Tāwari. Then there’s our unique Pua-ā-Tāne - bounty of the god of the forest. Our honeys are collected from remote parts of untouched indigenous rainforest that surrounds us. Our location and forest is the perfect home for keeping bees and producing 100% pure and natural honey. Our honeys are of the finest quality and are now proven award winners. Our Rewarewa Honey gained the Grand First Prize in the 10th Black Jar International Honey Tasting Contest in 2021 so is now deemed the “Best Tasting Honey in the World!” Our Tāwari and Pua-ā-Tāne Honeys made the final 30 of the hundreds of entries from across the world in this contest. Our Mānuka Honey and Tāwari Honey won Gold medals in the 2021 NZ Outstanding Food Producers Awards. So we comfortably claim our honeys are simply the best in taste and purity, and brimming with health-giving properties. Our honey varietals, especially Mānuka and Rewarewa, are also renowned for their properties – antibiotic, anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory. A bonanza of health benefits for our customers. Our product range puts our honey varietals into 500g, 250g and 110g jars, gift-packs and large pails. We also offer the PUHI Skincare range - Mānuka Honey and Oil based soap and balm, with healing and anti-ageing benefits for the skin. For honey–lovers in New Zealand and across the globe.

13/02/2026

🍯 Oven Baked Honey Pork Spare Ribs with Manawa Rewarewa Honey🍯
Perfect for and .❤️

✅ Ingredients
2 tbsp Manawa Rewarewa Honey, 2 tsp brown sugar, ⅓ cup olive oil, the juice of 1 lemon, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp ground pepper, 4 cloves of crushed garlic, 2 tsp paprika, 2 tbsp oregano, 1 tbsp yellow mustard, 4 tbsp BBQ sauce and 1.5 kg of pork ribs.
✅ Method
Preheat oven or barbeque to 160°C. Mix everything except the ribs. Brush generously over both sides. Wrap tightly in foil and bake for 2 hours. Remove foil, brush with remaining glaze. Crank oven to 200°C and bake 10–15 minutes until sticky and caramelised. Rest, slice, serve.
✅ Note the honey glaze may burn so watch it closely at the end.

10/02/2026

The heart 💓of our forests beats in Porirua!😄 Yep, our award-winning single-origin Manawa Honey🍯 is waiting for you on the shelves at Woolworths Porirua. Choose from , or 🍯.

So there you go all you Porirua whānau and followers - head in, grab your honey🍯, and taste the difference that comes from nature’s finest work right here in the heart of Te Urewera.

05/02/2026

💞Valentines - forget the classic roses & chocolates my love💓, we've got you...

Manawa Honey straight from the heart. It's way fancier than a wilting rose, and absolutely delicious just like... well up to the imagination that one!! 🤣💋🍯

Make her or his day! Use Code LOVE26 at checkout for 10% off any of the gifts in our Gifts Category. Link in comments below 👇

Offer is valid for 10 days only so best order right now!

We offer worldwide shipping, with free delivery on New Zealand orders over $75.

30/01/2026

The Tawari tree is a climate and habitat specialist that evolved for very specific conditions found only in certain North Island upland forests. It's not that it won't grow elsewhere—it's that it can't survive long-term outside its narrow ecological niche.

The flower of the Tawari tree buds form March & April each year. Blooming comes with a spectacular mass of white, star-shaped flowers, appearing from October to December. These flowers produce copious amounts of nectar, attracting our honey bees that must think of Tawari as a nectar paradise.

No wonder that our Tawari Honey was a Top 10 winner (World Creamed Category) at the World's Best Tasting Honey Contest in the US in 2025. Buy online at www.manawahoney.co.nz.

29/01/2026

🐝 Behind the scenes: educating the next generation 🐝

Recently, we were stoked to host the team from Pitomata Productions for a special collaboration! 🤝

We teamed up to film an episode of the show, Mahi Tika Ana, which is all about the perspective of the young presenters in the taiao (natural world). Of course, our episode focuses on the incredible world of the honeybee.

Our Chief Beekeeper, Taawi Te Kurapa, took the young presenters under his wing (and into the hives!) to share his deep knowledge of bee life, and how bees make honey. It was an inspiring day of storytelling and hands-on learning!

At the heart of what we do is a commitment to passing on our knowledge, and seeing the rangatahi engage so closely with the bees was a highlight for our team.

Stay tuned - we'll let you know when this episode airs...

23/01/2026

Let's all help get rid of these killer hornets! If they get a hold in Aotearoa NZ they will destroy native ecosystems and beehives and they will harm people.

We still have a slim chance to get rid of them. 👀 If you see one of these take a photo (if you can) and report:
• online at report.mpi.govt.nz
• by calling hotline 0800 809 966

To date, there have been 43 confirmed queen hornets found most of these with nests or evidence of nesting. Which means those not found will now have nests and they will spread further over this year.

MPI has extended their area of surveillance, but these hornets may have spread to other parts of the country already. So everyone, everywhere needs to be vigilant. Set traps to catch them and keep an eye out to report them. Kia mataara!

20/01/2026

Harvest is no holiday time! While others are enjoying their holidays, our team has been harvesting summer's bounty!

16/01/2026

Just above our office at Manawa Honey, morning breaks after summer night storms...

Reminding us always of our - the mist , embracing Te Maunga, the mountains about us here in the valley of .

08/01/2026

Happy New Year from all of us here at Manawa Honey. Refreshed, batteries recharged and I can hear the boss already 🤣🤣🤣

Thanking our bees 🐝🐝 who were hard at work—braving the holiday winds and rains without a day off, whilst we were enjoying our summer break.🙏

Their New Year’s resolution is simple: gather, produce, and prepare. It reminds us that rewards come from consistency and resilience.

Here’s to a year of purpose, in the hive and beyond.✨

19/12/2025

We love producing honey 🍯 but we also care about our . 🌿🐝🐝

That's why our CEO Brenda Tahi was part of research about the impact of honey bees on native bees and other insects visiting mānuka flowers. The research, led by Corinne Watts of Landcare Research, was a pilot exercise aimed at identifying if there might be an issue of honey bees affecting our native insects.

The results indicate that there may be some effects. Although the results are not conclusive, the research has certainly raised the question of what's the cost to our native bees in Aotearoa of the high demand for New Zealand's Manuka Honey.

We'll have to await further research to know the answer to this question. Meantime we understand that this research may not be popular with the honey industry, but we think it is important that we look after our native pollinators.

For more information on the research click on the links below in the comments👇👇

This point was highlighted for Brenda when she was in Canada last month and she met with a scientist there who is working on native pollinators for their massive cropping industry. The key issue for them is that they struggle to keep honey bees alive through their winters, and instead they import new bees from New Zealand each year.

As you can see this is a real risk to their food security as a nation. So they are exploring how to bring back native pollinators into their food production systems. Who knows we may need to do this here in Aotearoa one day - you just

15/12/2025

Just the music of our all over the great flowering of our Tī Kōuka (cabbage tree) here in Ruatāhuna! 🌼🐝

We were told by our old people that when our Tī Kōuka flowers heavily like this, it's a tohu (sign) for a long, dry summer ahead. Given how strong the sun’s been already this summer… we reckon we’re in for a scorcher! ☀️

But beyond the weather, flowering Tī Kōuka is a banquet for our bees, and a reminder of the connectedness of plant life, pollinators and the whenua.

What’s happening in your rohe (area)? Have you noticed the Tī Kōuka flowering near you? What’s the kōrero your whānau shared about this tohu?

Drop a comment below—we’d love to hear what everyone has to say! 👇

09/12/2025

Our young people are our future... A while back, we were privileged to join the Dene First Nation of Lutsel'ke, NWT, Canada for a cultural exchange in their traditional world.

We were taken to an isolated camp for 10 days in the bare-lands of the far north to share traditional knowledge, stories, language, and form permanent connections between the our two peoples. A major purpose was to immerse our youth in customary learning.

Wow, what an experience to be a part of this journey—to learn that in other parts of the world, other Indigenous cultures are experiencing similar challenges. The struggle is real: bringing back our language, our culture, connecting people back to their whenua, living off the land.

Here's where you can watch the video that recorded this :
https://youtu.be/B_1S7E1Yl1M

Address

363a Mataatua Road
Ruatahuna
3079

Opening Hours

Monday	8:30am - 5pm
Tuesday	8:30am - 5pm
Wednesday	8:30am - 5pm
Thursday	8:30am - 5pm
Friday	8:30am - 5pm

Telephone

+6473663166

Website

https://www.manawahoney.co.nz/

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Our Story

Manuka and Forest Tree Honey Production Specialist

We produce manuka and other exquisite honeys in our homeland, Ruatahuna, a precious place located in the heart of Te Urewera. Our honeys are collected from our remote region of untouched indigenous rainforest that surrounds us. Our location and forest is the perfect home for keeping bees and producing 100% pure and natural honey. Manawa Honey NZ was founded by the Tuhoe Tuawhenua Trust which aims to sustainably manage the land and resources of our region for the benefit of current and future generations.