54 | Rangitikei: Tweeddale Apiaries Bee business origins in POW camp T T Virginia Wright The Tweeddale family is one of the largest producers of honey in the country with hives all around Taihape, up the Whanganui River and throughout the King Country. REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Don Tweeddale has been working with bees full-time since he left school at the age of 14 to work with his father in 1963 but he’d been helping out with the hives for as long as he can remember. As a returned servicemen Don’s father Stuart was allocated the land in Taihape in 1945. At the same time he used all his war-savings to purchase 300 hives and together with his new bride Thelma moved there to start their new life together as bee-keepers. “Dad was in the first echelon that went to Egypt as a machine gunner,” explains Don, “so he had two and a half years fighting then he got captured and spent another two and a half years in a prisoner-of-war camp. In that camp he read a battered old book on bee-keeping, and fortunately It was in English so he could understand it, and that’s where his interest began,” explains Don. That was the beginning of the family business that now spans four generations. Although the first hives were a disaster with 250 of them having to be destroyed due to being full of American Foul Brood, Stuart and Thelma continued undeterred. By the time Don left school to work with him they had around 500 hives but it still wasn’t enough to support the family. “You have to remember that in the 50’s and 60’s the only honey you could sell and maybe make a small profit from was white clover. “Manuka was deemed to be brown, not very healthy and with a strong taste so there was no market for it,” explains Don. Huge amounts of the land around Taihape was still covered in Manuka and by extension so was the honey. The Tweeddales moved their hives up into the high-country where land was being developed into high-country stations around Taihape and Napier. “They were growing lots of clover, putting on lots of super-phosphate, and we were able to produce enough white clover honey from those stations to keep our business going,” says Don. He sys it was another 30 years before people started to develop a taste for bush honey, and then in 1990 the New Zealand bee-keeping industry gave Waikato University Professor Peter Molan some funding to research manuka honey. Together with his PhD students he discovered its anti-bacterial properties and today’s market began. Prior to that the only market the Tweeddales had for it was selling it to Sanitarium who needed its strong taste to shine through their muesli bars. The Tweeddales would usually stockpile what remained and feed it back to their bees in winter and spring. Fast-forward to 2006, 2007 and 2008 and as the manuka honey market grew the slow expansion of hives exploded such that New “You have to remember that in the 50’s and 60’s the only honey you could sell and maybe make a small profit from was white clover. Manuka was deemed to be brown, not very healthy and with a strong taste so there was no market for it.” Zealand now has the highest ratio of beehives to land in the Western world. “So now we’ve gone the other way,” says Don, “and we have an over-supply of manuka and the price has dropped back about 25 percent. “There’s too many bee-keepers basically.” Forward again to 2021 and Don, together with his wife Conchita and her two daughters Rowena and Maria and with Don’s three children now in their mid 40’s - Mark, Steven and daughter Kim - run the business between them looking after around 25,000 bee hives in total. They are one of the largest producers of honey in the country with hives all around Taihape, up the Whanganui River and through the King Country. They sell their clover, bush and lower UMF manuka honey to wholesalers who package and sell it here and overseas, and they’ve recently started working on their own Tweeddale brand with a specific niche market in mind. Their obvious success boils down to one thing as far as Don is concerned, and that’s family, including two grandchildren now also working in the business as team leaders and looking after their own beehives, cousins Sean (22) and Jesse (18). “Conchita is the powerhouse behind it all,” says Don. “But the strength of our business and the size that we are is all to do with family, everyone’s committed to making the business progress for the family. “That’s the concept that I developed and my dad developed and it’s going very well, we’re still going strong after all these years.” Expert inspections and advisory services start with an experienced team. 2COMPLY.CO.NZ 0800 2 COMPLY (0800 226 675) compliance@pb.co.nz Property Brokers Compliance is proud to support Tweed"ale Apiaries Property Brokers Compliance is at the leading edge of Compliance throughout the lower North Island. We strive to be industry leaders, further expanding on 30 years of professional experience in our field. We provide the following services: IQP inspections, Fire alarm installation and remedial work, Building Warrant of Fitness documentation and 12A certificates, Sprinkler and fire alarm testing, Fire fighting equipment inspections, 24/7 call-out service, Evacuation scheme development and Provision of new fire extinguishers.
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