Arataki Honey Visitor Centre, Havelock North

In the beautiful rural Havelock North Wine Country lies the Arataki Honey company and a few thousand bees to show you what they get up to in those hive boxes you see in the country.

It is a bright, new, innovative centre with a self-paced learning experience. It is great for children of any age, as well as those big kids!

• Look at the honey bees under microscopes

• Smell the various scents of honey/wax/propolis

• Feel the warmth they generate all by themselves to keep themselves and their young comfortable and healthy

• Enter their Giant Bee Hive and watch the worker bees take care of their Queen & the Drones up close

• You might want to try your hand at some of the puzzles –all age groups catered for!

• Everyone can taste nine different flavours of honey the bees produce. New Zealand produces some of the best honey in the world, many of them unique to our country. 

• Visitors can sample our native bush honeys – Manuka, Rewarewa, Kamahi and Tawari – or the honey collected from hill and pasture areas – Clover and Blue Borage. Arataki Honey has a taste to suit everyone.

Our working hives and bee wall is where you can watch the worker bees up close doing their bee dance after returning from their ventures into the wild, carrying loads of pollen to the right place in the hive for storage, or cleaning out cells to prepare for storing honey or in readiness for their Queen to lay eggs. You might also be able to watch Drone (male) and worker bees (female) hatching over the summer period. The bees are active all year around, so there is always action in the hive.

Our team is always in the centre to help out with spotting the Queen in a hive, explain the different stages in the life of a bee or answer that question about honey that you’ve always wanted to know.