The Business of Bees

When Andy Westland gets up in the morning he puts honey on his toast before heading out to tend to his bees. Wife Amy uses honey to sweeten her Milo and their school age children both eat honey straight off the spoon. The family behind Westlands Honey clearly love the business they’re in.

Words: Pattie Pegler

Andy’s love affair with honey goes way back to childhood and he was a teen beekeeper even in high school. Along with wife Amy, he set up Westlands Honey 13 years ago with a few hives from other beekeepers who were downsizing. They would split and grow those hives to develop more and breed their own queens - an intricate process. “Whether they become a queen is down to the size of the cell that they’re in,” explains Amy, “They are either workers or drones and the queen is in the biggest cells. So you take the little grub out and put them in a bigger cell cup to grow a queen.” 

In the early years the couple were juggling the business of beekeeping with their then day jobs. Andy was working scanning and shearing sheep and Amy worked at a bank in Fairlie so the honey was a side business. 

“The bee industry can be quite up and down,” says Amy. “So having that other work gave us a bit of security – you can’t control mother nature.” 

They initially sold all their honey through the NZ Honey Co-op in Timaru. It meant that they could focus on the bees and the honey rather than worrying about how to market and sell. But NZ Honey Co-op closed a few years ago and then two years ago after selling through different organisations, Amy and Andy decided to start their own brand – Westlands Honey. 

Today it is a full-time job for both of them and even the kids earn their pocket money in the summer holiday by helping out with honey extraction.  They have some 840 hives spread around the surrounding Mackenzie District. “All the hives are on farmers’ land,” says Amy. “And most farmers want the bees as they pollinates the clover which puts nitrogen in the ground. It stops them having to spread nitrogen and especially when you’ve got a lot of hill country – that can be an expensive prospect.”

Westlands Honey produce clover, multiflora and raw honey as well as honeycomb. But whilst many of us might raise our eyebrows at the price of manuka honey, the rest of the honey industry is not quite so fortunate, says Amy. 

So the family work hard on different ways to sell their honey. You’ll find it in the local Four Square; they sell it directly online; they sell it for fundraisers and they’ve even supplied honey to another business who makes chilli based products – the result is a Carolina Reaper infused honey which apparently goes a treat on pizzas.  More recently they’ve added a tour of their honey processing facility to the list – and visitors can now book in to see exactly what goes on behind the scenes. 

Amy, who is allergic to bee stings, admits to being fascinated by the bees and the whole family love the business these smart little creatures have given them. “We’re learning different things everyday, It’s not easy but it’s fun, it’s challenging and it’s satisfying.”