Blog

Serves 4. Ingredients ½ cup almond meal4 eggs1 Tbsp. potato starch5 Tbsp. MVH Native Bush Honey2 Tbsp. butter / sunflower oil2 bananas, sliced in half½ cup good quality ricotta¼ good quality dark chocolate (we use Hogarths)1 tsp. chilli flakes Method Place almond meal, eggs, potato starch and 2 Tbsp. of Honey into a blender. Blend until the batter has a smooth consistency. Coat sliced bananas with the 2 Tbsp. of Native Bush Honey and set aside. Heat a medium pan and add ½ Tbsp. butter. Pour ¼ cup of batter into the pan, swirling around the mixture, and cook for 1 minute each side, or until slightly golden. Repeat with entire mixture. Keep the pan over a low heat and add bananas. Cook until golden on each side. Add dark chocolate and chilli flakes to a

This lovely warming slice is just what you need as the days begin to get cooler. If you are feeling a little naughty, a drizzle of good quality melted dark chocolate over the cooled slice is a nice addition. Time: 30 minutesServes: 8-10 Ingredients: 100g butter ⅓ cup MVH Mānuka Honey ¼ cup brown sugar 1 tsp. baking soda 1 cup desiccated coconut 2 cups rolled oats ½ cup plain flour Method: Preheat oven to 180°C and line a small 21 cm slice tin with baking paper.In a medium-size saucepan over medium to low heat, melt the butter, honey and brown sugar together. Stirring well to combine.Add the baking soda. Stir to combine and the mixture will foam up.Fold through the coconut, rolled oats and flour and mix well to combine.Transfer the mixture to the slice tin and push

Beekeeping doesn’t exactly spring to mind when people are asked to name an action-packed job. However, during the Mānuka honey harvest, we sometimes feel as if we are on the set of a James Bond movie — starring Murray Elwood instead of Daniel Craig.  What with the stunning mountain scenery, top-secret locations, a swooping helicopter, and the very real danger of getting a bee stuck in your hair, it certainly is an exhilarating part of our honey’s journey from the hive to the pot.  But for us, the Mānuka honey harvest is not simply some sort of high-adrenaline gold rush. We put a lot of careful thought and planning into ensuring that our harvest is sustainable, ethical and good for bees.  While the majority of our hives will remain in the same location throughou

As New Zealand moves into ‘Alert Level 4’, Mountain Valley Honey will maintain a ‘skeleton staff’ to watch over and look after the bees so that we can keep providing honey going forward. As an essential business, we will remain open for online orders and our couriers (also an essential business) will continue to pick up and deliver those orders throughout New Zealand. For local customers, please note that we are not open for visitors and are unable to do refills during this lockdown period. We will make sure to let you know when this changes. We understand that this is an unsettling time so it is important that we all take care of one another, be kind and keep smiling. We thank you for your continued support and are thinking of you all Murray, Nicky

Summer just turned into autumn, and we barely even noticed! We’ve been so busy filling pots with this year’s golden harvest. All our hives are back safely from the wilderness areas where they spent the summer, which means lots of activity in the big sheds! We’ll be sharing the story of how the honey gets from the hive to the honey pot in our next blog. Autumn is such a busy and abundant time of the year in the Nelson region, with honey being just one of the summer bounties that we get to enjoy. Fridges everywhere are packed with harvest goodies, either from Nelson’s wonderful farmers’ markets or from people’s own gardens.  Sharing the harvest with friends and families is a real tradition — in fact, sometimes it becomes a bit of a competition to find homes for thos

Nelson is such a vibrant and exciting place in summer, with everyone taking to the beaches, mountains and rivers. At Mountain Valley Honey we are full of excitement too, and anticipation — because summer is when we finally see the results of the year’s hard work. Last week we began the extraction of this season’s honey.  As always, it was a pure delight to retrieve those first few boxes of the summer, all fragrant and oozing with sticky goodness. It is one of those little joys that makes our job so rewarding and marks the beginning of our most thrilling time of the year. In the summertime, our bees are really out in force, having built up their numbers over spring. Now our hives are truly buzzing away, each with up to 50,000 bees inside. The honey boxes, which we located

A Collaboration with BakerGatherer Inspired by the prosperous Nelson region and it’s amazing produce and food, dripping with goodness, this Tea and Honey Cake uses MVH Manuka Honey for it’s full-bodied and earthy flavours. This is then layered with Earl Grey infused Buttercream and plenty of cookie crumbs, because after all, what tea is complete without the perfect dipping cookie. There are also two ways to assemble this cake, a shorter and longer technique. So depending on how daring you are, the amount of time you have or the overall aesthetic you want to achieve, make sure you read both assembly instructions in the method below. Prep Time: 30 minsCook Time: 35 minsCrumb & Milk: 20 mins Ingredients Honey Cake 430g plain flour300g caster sugar2 tsp.

With only ten sleeps until Christmas, Nelson is beginning to buzz! Everywhere are telltale hints of the approaching holiday season. Our local markets and craft shops are packed with people foraging for special gifts for family and friends. Trees can be spotted here and there, clinging miraculously to the roofs of cars. Stalls are popping up on street corners, stacked high with local produce. Mysterious brown paper bags turn out to be packed with summer-ripe cherries — a sure sign that our Nelson Christmas is just around the corner.  Soon families will be heading to the beaches, rivers and lakes with baskets packed full of summer goodies. The hard work of our pollinating bees over the spring has ensured a bounty of fruits and vegetables. The berryfields are b

It’s beginning to feel like Christmas with Nicky already playing Christmas music (“Too early” says Murray) and freshly picked lilies filling the air. We’ve decided to celebrate Christmas early with 12 days of amazing deals starting on the 1st of December. EACH DEAL LASTS 24 HOURS Day 1 (1st Dec): Free Shipping on all orders over $95 to an NZ address. Day 2 (2nd Dec): 25% Off Bee Pollen Day 3 (3rd Dec): 25% Off Beeswax Wraps & Pockets Day 4 (4th Dec): Get a FREE 250g Clover Honey if you spend over $75 Day 5 (5th Dec): Get 10% off Gift Boxes* when you spend over $80 Day 6 (6th Dec): Get a FREE Drizzler when you spend over $50 Day 7 (7th Dec): Buy any three 2kg jars and get a free 250g of Native Bush Honey Day 8 (8th Dec): 15

Spring has well and truly arrived in Nelson and that means a change of scene for some of our Mountain Valley Honey bees. Beginning around October, when the days grow warm with sunshine and soft breezes, our bees go on a special working holiday — into the local orchards to help pollinate fruit trees and vines.  Lending a helping hand with pollination around the Nelson region has been a long-standing tradition in our company, and one that runs in the family.  “I’ve been pollinating for around 28 years” says owner, Murray Elwood. “It feels like forever – but Dad was pollinating well before me. Makes me sound old!”  This treasured relationship with local farmers goes right back to when Murray’s dad, Merv was just starting out. Working in the

SNAP & WIN on our Facebook Page this November. This November we’re giving away a 1kg jar of honey each week on our Facebook page for the best photo submitted each week. Each Monday we will set a theme for the week, and our favourite photo each week will win a jar of delicious Mountain Valley Honey. How it works: Watch out for a ‘Competition Post’ each Monday on our Facebook page.We’ll announce the weekly theme.Snap a photo related to the weekly theme.Post your photo(s) in the Competition post comments section.We’ll pick our favourites and announce a winner each Saturday on our Facebook page. Like and Follow our Facebook Page so you don’t miss the announcement! How we pick a winner: We will choose our favourite photo each week, taking into consider

As the days get longer and temperatures begin to rise, here at MVH we are performing our spring checks in preparation for a busy summer. Likewise, our bee friends are also preparing for a busy harvest season. “This time of year the bees are focused on growing their numbers, with the queens increasing egg production,” says MVH co-owner Murray Elwood.  The number of bees per hive can double during spring in preparation for summer’s ideal harvesting conditions. Spring in 2019 “Spring this year has been a little challenging for our bees, with cooler temperatures and a lot of wet weather making life hard for them,” says Murray Elwood Bees stay in their hives while it’s raining. When it’s windy bees will stay closer to the ground and stay closer to the hiv