Our Story
Bee Buzz Apiaries Director Simon along with his late father established this beekeeping business in September 2001. Simon’s life-long passion for bees soon saw Bee Buzz grow from what was a hobby into the well-established business it is today, including over 7,000 acres of high country manuka land. With a great team of committed and passionate beekeepers, the legacy for the love of our bees and nature continues in Aotearoa. Bee Buzz aspirations is for replanting and regenerating land and native.
Since losing his father, Simon has taken this business to far greater heights than could ever have been imagined. Now fifteen years later Bee Buzz owns majority of its land we beekeep on. We specialise in Manuka honey and honeydew. We also do clover and some meadow honeys. Bee Buzz has built up to over 2,000 hives and up to ten staff.
Our base is in Oxford, North Canterbury where we process our honey and have storage for all our beekeeping equipment, office and staff amenities. We have our own queen rearing program in the spring that we mainly use for new hives or replacing queenless hives. We run about 500 nukes. We have built a great strain of bee for purpose and our kind of beekeeping.
We home all our bees in our home area of Oxford through the winter and shift to our properties to manuka every year. We have been enhancing these properties with manuka each year so as we can produce more manuka and place more hives. It has been fantastic to watch the regeneration over the years.
In 2016 Simon was showing two people from Watson and Son around for potential bee sites to be contracted on our own Puhi Puhi land. When the driver lost control going up a steep ridge, slid backwards over the ridge and over the bank. It was a miracle everyone survived - Simon was thrown from the vehicle during the accident and pinned to the ground by a tree and had to be cut free. He was airlifted to hospital with multiple injuries, was in hospital for one month before coming home in a wheelchair for another month and is still recovering to this day. He has several operations that are pending.
