“It Will Blow Your Mind” – Apimondia Experience Has Kiwis in Awe

Despite the huge distance separating New Zealand and Denmark, at least 20 New Zealanders made their way to the biennial, global beekeeping showcase that is Apimondia, September 24-27. They report a “fabulous”, “overwhelming” and “very, very good” event that will “blow your mind”, but return with warnings for honey producers and suggest that New Zealand needs to have an even stronger showing in future.

Mānuka Orchard owner Logan Bowyer hit Apimondia 2025 in Copenhagen, Denmark, in style, seeking to help New Zealand honeys standout. Photo: Mānuka Orchard.

“Nothing gets close to the scale, scope and quality of the biennial juggernaut that is Apimondia,” says a veteran of five of the global gatherings – and many smaller beekeeping conferences beside – NZ Beeswax general manager Nick Taylor.

“Copenhagen lived up to the hype, truly the peak global apiculture trade and science showcase. 7000-plus attendees from 121 countries, 216 trade booths, four days of scientific presentations with five lecture theatres running concurrently.”

Current vice-president of the Oceania division of the Apimondia organisation that is the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations, Maureen Conquer counted the Copenhagen trip as her eighth such attendance, across five continents, and says Europe-based events are always well attended.

“It was a good one. Well organised, a good venue and a good turnout. The Scandinavian team did a good job of pulling together a great programme,” Conquer says.

While the four-day conference in Denmark’s capital city was the undoubted highlight, various beekeeping and honey ‘technical excursions’ also took place in the days before and after that, extending into neighbouring Sweden and Norway.

Back at the conference venue several of the Kiwis in attendance dubbed the vast array of science posters, various competition displays, trade booths, ‘Global Honey Bar’ and four concurrent auditoriums for expert presentations and discussions “information overload”.

“I wanted to be here, wanted to be there, and just couldn’t,” Conquer says.

While there was a good contingent of New Zealanders “walking the floor”, there were also at least four trade displays by Kiwi companies. The Mānuka Orchard team of three were kept busy providing honey tastings and educating the punters; Brendan Shivnan presented his NZ Native Honey products; dnature Diagnostics and Research owners John and Belinda Mackay showcased their wares, including the well-received Foster Method of qPCR American foulbrood detection which they also detailed on stage; Crystech NZ engineers Mat Still and Jamie Grainger wore the ‘flag’ that is All Blacks jerseys at their booth; while Kyle Atkinson demonstrated his HiveGate on the larger Vita Bee Health stand.

How Was NZ Honey Received?

There were two main opportunities for the global beekeeping audience to sample New Zealand honey varieties, at the ‘Global Honey Bar’ where many countries presented samples, and from Mānuka Orchard’s booth where the golden-jacket adorned team of owners Logan and Tania Bowyer, plus Sally Ross, worked tirelessly.

“Everybody wanted to taste mānuka honey, find out what it was and why it was so special,” Conquer, an expert honey judge in her own right, said of her time manning the New Zealand table at the Global Honey Bar.

Preparing the New Zealand table at the ‘Global Honey Bar’ are Maureen Conquer and Jody Mitchell.

There was also strong interest in the thyme honey they had on display, with its flavour profile differing to that of European thyme honey.

Unsurprisingly, mānuka was also the order of the day at the appropriately named Mānuka Orchard display.

“The mānuka name is well known in these circles, but not understood at all,” Logan Bowyer says,

“Other floral types are not known at all, but we got very positive feedback and interest for our other New Zealand honey varieties because of their flavour, in addition to the medicinal interest in mānuka.”

Bigger and Better Representation Needed

While the response to the honeys which made the long journey north was favourable, those Kiwis in attendance seem to have reached an agreement that next time around a more coordinated approach to promoting the product is required.

“There were a lot of other countries that had very, very strong representation at an industry level,” reports Honey New Zealand head of apiculture Adam Rundle, who attended along with the company’s chief technical officer Young Mee Yoon.

“We have the most valuable honey in the world, but don’t have official representation. It just seems crazy to me. It highlighted how important it is for us to get our ducks in a row in that space.”

Rundle commended the work of the Mānuka Orchard team over all four days.

“Those guys are on the stand every day, really flying the New Zealand flag. They've got their own business interests to do that, but I feel like they were doing it on behalf of the whole country as well, which is pretty awesome, but it really shouldn't be their job to do that.”

Having recently been elected to the UMF Honey Association board, Rundle says he plans to discuss the issue with the mānuka honey marketing group.

Mānuka Orchard were helping “fly the flag” for New Zealand honey at Apimondia, with gold-jacket adorned owner Tania Bowyer left, and Sally Ross kept constantly busy offering honey tastings and educating the more than 7000 attendees. Photo: Mānuka Orchard.

From Bowyer’s perspective he sees “the world of Apimondia as growing and New Zealand has a very limited, funded engagement – mostly just a few passionate individuals showing up”.

“Meanwhile, the knowledge of governments, scientists and beekeeping representatives is being formulated, combined, discussed, and evolved with a lack of input about our unique products. This will affect our ability to supply honey to markets around the world in the future if we don’t keep our finger on the pulse,” he warns.

Vastly experience in that field of work is Conquer, who as well as being at the honey bar was judging “some very fine meads” and making several presentations on the topic of honey, namely mānuka. Surrounding all that, she says international scientists were questioning her about who they should be collaborating with in New Zealand regarding honey science. Therefore, Conquer suggests getting leading scientists in that area, such as Katherine Holt and Megan Grainger, a ticket to future events should be a priority for the industry.

The Elephant in the Room – Honey Adulteration

It is perhaps unsurprising that, at an event which cancelled its global honey awards due to the prevalence of ‘adulteration’, and with honey being one of the most commonly faked food products in the world, it would be a hot topic. Many of the scientific presentations addressed the thorny issue and honey expert Sunil Pinnamaneni, founder of The Experiment Company and also PAQ Labs in Auckland, called honey adulteration “the most intense topic at the conference”.

He was encouraged at the variety of testing techniques used to address honey adulteration, including high-resolution mass spectrometry and whole-honey DNA for fingerprinting. However, they come with limitations, including the price tag.

“The biggest challenge here is the lack of harmonised methods for detecting adulteration, and all relevant experts agreed on one thing: we must use a combination of all techniques to tackle the adulteration issue. Generally, the reception for this topic among beekeepers from most countries was average, as the testing costs for such techniques typically exceed €1,000 per sample,” Pinnamaneni says.

Kaimai Range Honey owners Ralph and Jody Mitchell were just one of two recipients of the Beekeepers for the Planet Outstanding Achievement Award at Apimondia 2025.

Conquer is well aware of the challenge, given her passion for honey, honey judging, and long-time role with the Apimondia Federation that addresses it. She says those attempting to detect honey fraud can feel like the boy with their finger in the dyke.

“You are chasing your tail. It is worse than drugs at the Olympics. As soon as you put standards in place for anything, whether it is the EU (European Union) putting them in place for honey going in, or us putting it on mānuka, you are giving the adulterers a recipe. Consequently, they get there pretty quick and find the loop holes,” she says.

Honey producers should also be “on guard” with the Apimondia Federation also releasing a statement, in conjunction with the conference, deeming the harvest of ‘immature’ honey which is then ‘dried’ as a form of adulteration.

“They are working very hard in labs around the world to mitigate any honey fraud from any destination. So, if people think that they are being smart, they really need to be very careful. If someone is caught, it would effect the reputation of our entire industry,” Conquer says.

A Win for Kiwi Honey?

While the honey awards – which have previously been the domain of Kaimai Range Honey owners Ralph and Jody Mitchell – were not held this time around, the couple still managed to score a win on a number of fronts. Not only were they recognised with one of two ‘Beekeepers for the Planet Outstanding Achievement Awards’, presented for their ‘Trees for Bees’ planting and development of a 1200ha property they own in Taranaki, but Jody Mitchell says she has convinced a major German lab to further investigate the properties of New Zealand’s native honeys. Those honeys often don’t meet some of the exacting standards of entry to Europe, possibly due to their natural makeup.

The Bay of Plenty beekeeper has presented tawari and rewarewa honey samples to German-based leading honey tester Quality Services International (QSI) who, along with a German Government representative, have agreed to fund testing of the samples so they can better understand New Zealand’s unique honey.

“I explained that by forcing pollen, diastase and invertase standards they are basically getting an inferior product. For example, by seeking a high pollen count, they are basically asking for high kanuka levels in the manuka honey,” she says.

“We were trying to get people to realise what we are producing is reaching a certain standard and is the real deal.”

What Looms on the Horizon

Also discussed at length in Copenhagen were the advancing honey bee pests of tropilaelaps mites – native to Asia but encroaching on Europe – and Asian hornets. The hornet has made the jump from mainland Europe to Britain in recent years and Hawke’s Bay beekeeper John Berry says what he learned in Copenhagen, has him on guard.

“We need to run an awareness campaign over the Asian hornet and be really ready,” Berry says.

“Everything I have seen says it will get here. If there is just one nest, we might beat it, but if it is hanging around two or three years by the time we pick it up, it will be too late by a long shot.”

Sunil Pinnamaneni, founder of The Experiment Company and PAQ Labs, says after attending his first Apimondia in Copenhagen, he was impressed and will now be going back to the biennial event on every occasion.

Berry says he learned how the Asian hornet queens “hibernate like common wasps, after mating in autumn” and thus “it is popping up all over the world because all it takes is one queen”.

He purchased a fiberglass encased Asian hornet which he hopes to get through New Zealand’s strict biosecurity checks, and use as an educational aid to help prepare others.

Networking, Networking, Networking…

One of the overriding themes from the Kiwi contingent at Apimondia was the socialising and networking opportunities that come with having more than 7000 likeminded individuals in one building.

“There’s a lot of people exchanging ideas, talking – I lost my voice for the week,” Conquer croakily says.

For the long-time Oceania delegate, a lot of those conversations are with old friends. For Pinnamaneni it was his first attendance to such an event, but the conversations still easily flowed, and he says he will now be attending all future Apimondia.

“It presents a huge opportunity to network and learn. It was great to connect with not only the scientific community, but also traders, hobby beekeepers, suppliers, and students from all over the world,” the PAQ Labs founder says.

And that networking can obviously present business opportunities, which was the goal for Belinda Mackay and her dnature booth. There the Foster Method piqued many attendees’ interests.

“We had some amazing interactions with researchers, beekeepers and people wanting to set up their own testing. People are wanting our testing, particularly swabbing method, in their countries,” Mackay reports.

“Apimondia is full on, nine to seven each day, but we’ve had people wanting to talk to us even before the expo had opened. We took hundreds of business cards, which are all gone, and hundreds of fliers on our tests – there’s few left.”

Every report received has been positive and commended the organisers, with most now looking forward to Dubai in 2027 for the 50^th anniversary of Apimondia, and Leipzig in Germany in 2029. While the regular September timing of the events is far from convenient for Kiwi beekeepers managing spring workloads, those who have found the time and means to attend in Copenhagen, as well as past events, stress the value.

“Kiwi beekeepers should add an Apimondia to their bucket list. Dubai 2027 is a great global hub and should see a repeat strong event,” Taylor says.

“It is a very worthwhile experience,” Conquer says following the full-on week, adding “I would recommend people try to go to at least one in their lifetime, because it will blow your mind.”