Our Mission
To connect people with the best of their region by crafting premium honey and curating exceptional local products — supporting passionate beekeepers, celebrating regional identity, and inspiring pride in local goodness.
We exist to elevate the experience of giving, sharing, and enjoying honey and artisan foods — with every jar, hamper, and gift telling the story of place, people, and purpose
Our Vision
To be New Zealand’s leading purveyor of premium local honey, honey-based gifts, and curated regional experiences — celebrating the richness of our land through authentic, small-batch products.
We champion outstanding local beekeepers and artisans, proudly connecting communities with the best of their region. Whether gifting, exploring, or indulging, our discerning customers enjoy handcrafted honey and hampers that honour provenance, sustainability, and the spirit of local.
Together with the locals, we celebrate local.
But it's not just about honey...
...it's about the importance of our bees and beekeepers who make our golden honey.
Not only do we want to ensure the honey you consume is sourced from your local region, we also want to ensure the honey is sustainably sourced. You can look at Be. Local Honey Collective as some sort of... a union... for our hard working honeybee. And like any union we have basic wishes for our workers like good living conditions, health care and a fair return for their hard work!
By supporting Be. Local, you not only receive the benefits of local honey but also get to support our precious honey bees- who are essential to life anywhere on earth.
What does Be. Local do?
Be. Local honey collective sources only pure, raw local honey (including from our own hives) and then distributes it within the region it was harvested. So Otago honey is sourced from Otago and sold in Otago. Canterbury within Canterbury, Auckland within Auckland.
Our competitors buy the cheapest honey from anywhere and everywhere, mix it all together and dump it nationwide on the shelves at prices which our hardworking, multi-generation beekeepers simply can’t sustain, and we are here to fix that.
Our goal is to ensure we only source from good local beekeepers and then put their pure, unblended honey on local shelves in our iconic glass jars, under our trusted label. No more trucking across country, no mass blending, no mixing. Just pure, raw, local honey.
So when you see our brand, you know that the product was sourced locally nearby. And with a flying radius of around 5km- who knows! The honeybees might have even come visit your very garden, and the honey you’re eating might be some of your own sweet nectar!
Why have local honey?
There are many benefits of eating raw honey, one of which is from its peroxide activity. With a little research you’ll see how easily destroyed these precious enzymes are, including by exposure to heat and other elements. By keeping honey raw and unprocessed we do everything we can to maintain all the natural benefits of honey and keep it as close as possible to how it was removed from the hive.
Not moving the honey across country, or blending it with other random variants significantly helps us on this journey of providing pure local honey. Not to mention the traces of local pollen you’ll only get from local honey!