Broad-Leaved Tea Tree: The Unknown Hero of our Honey Year

Have you heard about Belbowrie?

This photo was taken on a recent beekeeping trip by our beekeeper Daryl, and it shows one of those Australian plants that doesn’t get a lot of fanfare – but absolutely deserves it.

The broad-leaved tea tree.

If you live on the Mid North Coast of NSW, you’ll know the kind of country we’re talking about: coastal wetlands, low-lying swamps, paperbark country that can be boggy underfoot – and often written off by people as ’useless scrub’. But it buzzes with life when it’s in flower and it’s such an important part of the ecosystem and is where broad-leaved tea tree really shines – and where our bees get a great feed and plenty of quality pollen every single year.

Why were our bees all over it?

In short: because it’s reliable, nutritious, and because broad-leaved tea tree flowers consistently every year which makes it an incredibly important honey flow for us. Some years are bumper years, some are quieter – but this tree turns up regardless (just like us turning up to markets!).

From a beekeeper’s point of view, that matters a lot.

The flowers provide:

• a dependable nectar flow
• good, nutritious pollen for the bees
• steady supply when other floral sources can be patchy and can keep the bees strong so they’ll be ready to enjoy the next trees to flower in the season.

You might know this honey as Belbowrie

The name Belbowrie is thought to be derived from an Aboriginal word, often described as meaning something like “place of flowering gums.” 

If you’re from Port Macquarie, you’ve probably seen the name without even realising it refers to this tree and the resulting honey — for example, there’s Belbowrie Street and the Belbowrie Business Park both named after it.

Local beekeeping

Another big plus? As we and our bees live right here on the mid north coast, the flowering of the broad-leaved tea tree means: 

• less moving of hives
• less stress on the bees
• and a dependable flow we can plan around

In a landscape increasingly affected by droughts, fires and floods, having a reliable local honey source like broad-leaved tea tree is something we don’t take for granted.

It quietly underpins the health of our colonies at an important time of year and means we can bring you all your other honey favourites!.

What do we do with the honey?

Here’s the part that often surprises people.

Even though broad-leaved tea tree produces honey every single year, you won’t see us bottling it or selling it at the markets.

Why?

Because we have a buyer who purchases the entire harvest each season.

So while you’ll find our Yellow Box, Ironbark, Bloodwood, Stringybark – and soon Brush Box – at our market stalls, stockists and online honey shop, this particular honey heads off in one go.

It’s one of those behind-the-scenes harvests that plays a huge role in our beekeeping year, even if it never makes it onto our shelves or into your cup of tea or honey mustard salad or stir fry dressing.

Thanks broad-leaved tea tree and thanks to you our customers for supporting pure, local Australian honey and beeswax.