Comvita Mānuka honey is harvested from up and down New Zealand. From the countryside of sunny Northland or deep in the native bush in the Wairarapa, our honey all has one thing in common - it’s the product of pure, untouched nature.
Our hive locations across New Zealand are selected for the quality of their Mānuka trees and the concentration of the natural properties in the Mānuka flower. The remoteness of our hives, surrounded by Mānuka forests which are left untouched, is what we believe helps to maintain our honey’s pure, natural qualities.
On any given day, our bees are hard at work carrying out their complex tasks of pollinating the local flora, returning to and protecting the hive, and most importantly, looking after their queen. Our bees may not know how lucky they are to inhabit such a spectacular landscape, but we know the purity of this land impacts the quality of our Mānuka honey - creating a premium product unlike any other in the world.
The making of Comvita’s Mānuka honey is really down to the bees and their environment - we set our hives in prime locations and rely on nature to look after the rest. It’s this practice that allows us to stay true to our original mission to bring our customers the very best Mānuka honey - as nature intended.
Authentication of Mānuka Honey
For honey to be legally labelled as ‘Mānuka honey’, it must be predominantly collected from the nectar of Mānuka flowers. Mānuka honey contains unique and beneficial compounds, so laboratory testing for these compounds is used to determine the purity and potency of mānuka honey.
In New Zealand the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) enforces a Scientific Regulatory Definition for exported mānuka honey based on chemical fingerprinting and pollen DNA marker analysis. The definition requires minimum amounts of four specific phenolic compounds to be present in the honey:
- methoxybenzoic acid
- methoxyacetophenone
- phenyllactic acid
- hydroxyphenyllactic acid
- along with a Mānuka pollen DNA marker.
These compounds are produced naturally in the nectar of mānuka flowers and therefore naturally occur in mānuka honey. At Comvita, we ensure that both our domestic and export Mānuka honey meets MPI standards. This means that, wherever you buy our product, you can be confident that you are buying genuine Mānuka honey from New Zealand.
What makes Comvita™ UMF Mānuka Honey so special?
Comvita Mānuka honey is harvested from up and down New Zealand. From the countryside of sunny Northland or deep in the native bush in the Wairarapa, our honey all has one thing in common - it’s the product of pure, untouched nature.
