OUR STORY
How It Started
On the border of the Kahurangi National Park, Western Ranges Honey grew from a love of the outdoors and a childhood dream to live in the NZ wilderness, and a passion for bees.
In 2010, Rob started his beekeeping journey with just a few hives on a friend’s property. In 2013, he purchased a native bush block in the remote Western Ranges of Nelson. With untouched native forest and regenerating bush with established Kanuka, it had plenty of areas to develop and plant, plus the allure and mystery of the untamed NZ forest with its rich bio-diversity.
It was the perfect place to start...
Western Ranges Honey was registered in late 2019 to produce raw honey, 100% pure beeswax crafts and organic skincare, for discerning customers who care about quality and purity.
Where We Are Today
Today we are a small producer of high-quality raw honey, 100% beeswax candles/crafts, and organic skincare products. We run around 50 happy hives and extract honey in small batches at an extraction facility near Tapawera, Tasman.
Our products are in six retail outlets, we sell across New Zealand through our website and run a stall at local farmers’ markets.
Our Mission
The health of our bees is our first priority. In some seasons poor weather means leaving all honey stores for the bees’ winter food, rather than feeding them sugar syrup, a common commercial practice.
A healthy hive can consume over 30kg of honey during a cold winter, so their own honey is the least we can provide them!
We care about the purity of the products we deliver to our valued customers and test every batch of our honey for Glyphosate at Analytica Laboratories to an accuracy of 0.01 mg/kg.
