Back from New Zealand

Late last week, I got back from a 4 week trip to New Zealand. What a place! I'll spare the details since this is a bee blog, but suffice to say that my wife, the 4 kids and I had a superb time, and the campervan was an especial hit. What a place, though: so much to see and do! Beautiful, and it seemed stuffed full of nice people too. Anyhow, as we travelled through the land we often caught sight of many bee hives on land in view of the road. And what surprised me more was to see just how much manuka was in flower. I had supposed that the very high prices charged for manuka honey might be because the forage is rare (and perhaps globally it is) but we drove through many areas of New Zealand where the little white maunka flowers on their scrubby, gangly bushes just seemed to be everywhere. I bought some seeds to bring back with me for fun. I think I heard (can't remember where now) that someone in the UK is attempting to actually set up some proper plantation with the purpose of producing manuka honey over here. Googling it I found this link, and perhaps this is what I heard of (and it seems the plant has been in some places in the UK for quite a while).