MPI Still Working Behind the Scenes on Honey and Bee Alliance

While still short on details publicly, the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) is continuing to work behind the scenes to bring about an apicultural roundtable tentatively titled ‘New Zealand Honey and Bee Alliance’, “to assist the sector in building resilience, profitability and success”.

Terry Copeland, MPI programme director, export growth, has been meeting with beekeeping groups to garner interest in a potential ‘New Zealand Honey and Bee Alliance’.

In May various groups within apiculture confirmed they had been approached by MPI, the advance being led by the ministry’s programme director for export growth, Terry Copeland, with the purpose of forming an alliance to better connect the sector and help commission projects of collective benefit.

Through June discussions have been ongoing and Copeland, when requested, released a statement saying they are “continuing to engage with sector organisations and exporters and will meet further with beekeepers to increase our understanding of their perspectives, needs and expectations before bringing the potential Alliance members to a hui in Wellington later in the year”.

While MPI is not willing to say who those members might be, a document circulated to detail the concept to potential members lists the UMF Honey Association (UMFHA), Mānuka Charitable Trust, Apiculture New Zealand (ApiNZ), New Zealand Beekeeping Inc (NZBI), New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity, and Kiwifruit Growers Incorporated as proposed members.

Karin Kos, the soon-to-depart chief executive of ApiNZ as it transitions to Honey and Bees New Zealand, says there has been no communication with MPI in the last month regarding the alliance, with their concentrations being fully on establishing their own new group.

UMFHA chief executive Tony Wright has had several conversations with Copeland on the matter and says that, while the concept is promising, there is still plenty of unknowns.

“We are interested and it could be helpful. We just don’t know,” Wright says.

“We need to get through this reorganisation phase with ApiNZ and NZBI to understand where that is going to land to understand who we are dealing with in this alliance. We also need to be clear about the scope of the honey alliance, and at this stage it is not 100 percent clear who it is for and how it would benefit.”

With Honey and Bees NZ succeeding from ApiNZ with a narrower, almost singularly, commercial-beekeeper focus, Wright believes connecting UMFHA and the new beekeeping group through such an alliance could lead to new funding streams and improved outcomes for the wider industry.

“It is potentially a forum to deal with broader issues without having to have the answers all ourselves. For example, if we wanted to conduct research projects there is stuff which UMFHA would do, there is stuff which Honey and Bees NZ might do, but there is stuff that is potentially best done by a coalition. That is where having MPI at the table is brilliant because they are potentially an entity that can fund things,” Wright says.

At New Zealand Bee Health and Biosecurity their mandate is also narrow, focused on American foulbrood, and so chief executive Niha Long can see the benefits of an apicultural alliance, done right.

“I think it is a good initiative,” she says.

“MPI do need to support our industry and it probably should have happened a little bit earlier, but it is now happening so that is really good. It is a matter of putting our heads together and coming up with initiatives which will help our entire industry. It doesn’t matter who sits where, we all have skills to bring to the table and I think that is what this alliance is about.”

In 2025 Copeland left a seven year post as chief executive of Federated Farmers to take up the task of boosting export growth for the primary industry on behalf of the government. A strong apiculture sector, due to the role of honey bees as the country’s dominant pollination provider, is essential to primary industry growth.

There is no timeframe announced regarding achieving the “alliance” other than the hui slated for the, rather broad, timeframe of “later this year”.

“The hui would create the pathway of how the Alliance will operate, determine what it wants to achieve, and then go on to set goals and a priority list of projects to assist the sector in building resilience, profitability and success,” Copeland’s statement sets out.