New Zealand honey is one of our most prized exports but most of the headlines are dominated by Mānuka.
However, one couple in the Chatham Islands is creating a honey product unlike anything you've ever seen.
Chatham Islands Go Wild Freeze Dried Honey is described as “light and crunchy with rich floral flavours”.
It gets its distinctive taste “from the nectar of endemic flowers and fauna found nowhere else in the world”.
Its creator describes it as being like “candyfloss” or a “honey cloud with light floral flavours”.
Seven Sharp's Lucas de Jong met the couple behind the product, Fran Bonventre and Kaai Silbery, at their Chatham Islands home.
“I wanted something to stand with, or rise above the champions that are here,” Silbery, who is a chef, said of her creation.
De Jong asked what makes the Go Wild Freeze Dried Honey so special.
“Well the 80 million years of isolation - that’s a nice ingredient,” Silbery said.
She's not joking. That isolation means Chatham Islands bees are some of the healthiest, disease-free honey makers in the world.
“The bees here don’t have varroa mite, they don’t have AFB,” local beekeeper Mana Cracknell said.
That means no nasty chemicals.
“Products being sent overseas are being tested for insecticides and pesticides and we don’t have any of that.”
Bonventre and Silbery also take the time to show visitors around their land to share its story.
“A lot of people wanted to see where the honey comes from and the plant species,” Silbery said.
So they go out of their way to educate about a flower, bee and honey that's found nowhere else on earth.
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