Bees & Trees Mānuka Honey, the family-owned New Zealand producer, is marking 15 years of U.S. distribution in 2026 — a milestone that coincides with accelerating consumer demand for premium functional foods ahead of the cold-and-flu season and the holiday gifting window.
The Atlanta-based importer, co-founded in 2011 by Mike Everly after a period living in New Zealand, operates approximately 1,200 to 1,500 hives in the rugged hill country of eastern Taranaki on New Zealand's North Island. Everly returned to the United States in 2012 and has since maintained direct ownership of both the beehives and the honey production facility — a structure uncommon among U.S. honey importers, most of whom source through third-party packers.
The Product Range
Bees & Trees markets three Mānuka honey tiers differentiated by methylglyoxal (MGO) concentration, the bioactive compound associated with the honey's antimicrobial activity. The lineup spans 350+ MGO "Mid-Activity," 550+ MGO "High-Activity," and 830+ MGO "Founder's Reserve," retailing between $33 and $65 per jar. Each batch undergoes independent third-party MGO testing, providing retailers and consumers with documented potency verification — a meaningful differentiator in a category where provenance fraud has historically been a commercial concern. A gift-box configuration paired with a wooden honey spoon retails at $41, positioning the brand for the premium food-gifting segment that typically peaks between October and December.
The honey is extracted following the brief flowering season of Leptospermum scoparium, the native Mānuka tree, and aged for 12 to 24 months under controlled temperatures before packing. The product is minimally processed, unpasteurized, and filled into glass jars — attributes that resonate with the specialty and natural food retail channels where the brand concentrates its trade marketing. Some hive sites are sufficiently remote that hive transport requires helicopter access, underscoring the logistical complexity of the supply chain.
Market Positioning
Mānuka honey occupies a narrow but expanding shelf position within the broader $1.0+ billion U.S. honey market, commanding price premiums multiples above commodity varieties. The category benefits from sustained consumer interest in functional and wellness-oriented food ingredients, a trend that operators across foodservice and retail have leaned into following pandemic-era demand spikes for immunity-adjacent products. Culinary positioning — cheese boards, savory glazes, premium tea pairings — has broadened the brand's pitch beyond the wellness-supplement framing that initially drove category awareness.
Distribution currently runs through the brand's direct-to-consumer website, Amazon, and select specialty food and independent retailers across the United States. The company has not disclosed revenue figures or retail door counts, but the vertically integrated model — controlling sourcing, extraction, aging, testing, and packaging — gives Bees & Trees a margin structure and quality-assurance narrative that differentiates it from importers reliant on spot-market procurement.
For trade buyers evaluating premium honey SKUs ahead of Q4, the brand's MGO transparency and hive-to-jar traceability align with growing retailer demand for verified provenance in the functional food aisle. Coverage of related trends in the specialty food segment can be found in our premium food retail analysis and functional ingredient sourcing coverage.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
