ABOUT
Finders & Keepers is a small-scale honey producer from the Canterbury foothills of Windwhistle — located in the South Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Our honey is a celebration of the season, flora, and nuances of the bees’ forage. Each harvest brings its own unique flavour profile and characteristics to the honey as the result of a number of environmental factors; the date of the last winter frost, the amount of spring sunshine nourishing the warming earth, the humidity of the summer months and intensity of its heat.
For these reasons, you can expect to see variation in the colour, taste, and texture of honey from one year to the next. Instead of blending, pasteurising, or refining the honey in any way — we choose to revere these properties that make raw honey so unique.
This wild substance has captivated and been used (for many purposes) by ancient civilisations throughout history — now finding its way to the pantry of the modern home. Honey, with its sweetness and complexity, has a way of standing on its own as the hero on a plate; or used as a condiment to compliment, contrast, add depth, or balance flavours in cooking or cheese pairings.
Being a small producer means we're able to tend to each hive individually, moving the bees to our wild environments when they're delivering the most interesting or intense flowerings.
◯ MGO vs UMF
UMF (Unique Mānuka Factor) is an expensive way of referring to the amount of Methylglyoxal (MGO) found in mānuka honey. Methylglyoxal is a naturally occurring compound (measured in mg per kg) which gives mānuka honey its distinctive flavour and antibacterial properties.
The higher the number, the darker, more valuable, and potent the honey. Our 260+ MGO mānuka is equivalent to a 10+, 515+ MGO equal to a 15+, and 820+ MGO a 20+.
View our active mānuka range
Tom Dunbar, Apiarist
Sole keeper of bees, Tom has had an interest in the bugs ever since his school holiday job assisting the local keeper in Hanmer Springs. After some upskilling over a decade ago, he has been successfully keeping the bees and finding the honey on the family-owned hill country station where the hives are kept. All operations — from the off-season maintenance, and cleaning of hives and frames — to the collection of honey is carried out by Tom.
( Raw ) Unprocessed, unpasteurised honey means all the pollen, propolis, nutrients and enzymes that bees put into the production of honey, make their way into the jar.
A (brief) BACKGROUND TO THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE LABEL
The way in which we view the world is vastly different to how it's seen by bees.
While our vision is limited to a spectrum of light, bookended by ultraviolet and infrared, bees can see into the ultraviolet spectrum — opening their world up to colours and patterns invisible to our eyes.
Many flowers have bold patterning, or 'bullseyes', which direct bees to the area of the flower where the pollen and nectar is held. Due to the complexity of their vision, sugary substances like the nectar on a flower, is said to be seen to bees as iridescent; refracting colours in a similar way we see oil on wet concrete.
To mimic this visual phenomenon, each jar of our honey is stamped with a holographic foil describing the flavour and characteristics of that variety. Reacting differently to the lighting conditions it's viewed under, it can go from appearing subdued — to the point of being near invisible — to displaying a bright array of colours and hues.
