The Steens Story: From Three Beehives to Raw Mānuka Honey Around the World

What started with three beehives, a love of nature and a determination to do things differently has grown into a New Zealand Mānuka honey brand enjoyed around the world.

Steens® was founded in 1982 by Paul and Sheryl Steens, long before Mānuka honey became the globally recognised wholefood it is today. More than 40 years later, Steens remains family owned, with the same philosophy at its heart: keep honey as close as possible to the way the bees created it.

It all started with Paul and Sheryl

The Steens story actually begins before the bees.

Paul was a butcher and Sheryl a teacher when the pair met in New Zealand. After marrying and settling near the coast, they became fascinated by bees and bought their first three beehives.

Neither came from a beekeeping family. Everything had to be learned from the ground up, but that gave Paul and Sheryl the freedom to question conventional methods and develop their own approach. As their number of hives grew, so did their family. Sheryl continued teaching while Paul focused increasingly on beekeeping, turning those first few hives into a growing family business.

Then, during the 1980s, research led by Dr Peter Molan at the University of Waikato began revealing the unusual properties of New Zealand Mānuka honey. Paul and Sheryl recognised just how special the honey their bees were producing could be and became early advocates for protecting its quality and authenticity. Steens was one of the founding beekeepers of the organisation that would eventually become the UMF Honey Association. If you're unsure what to look for, here's how to spot fake Mānuka honey.

But for the Steens, producing Mānuka honey was never simply about collecting honey and putting it into jars. They wanted the honey their customers ate to be as close as possible to the honey they experienced directly from the hive.

In their own words, Steens shares their story…

Building Steens from the hive up

That philosophy shaped the business from its earliest days.

Today, Steens is still much more than a Mānuka honey brand. We are the beekeepers, harvesters and producers behind the honey. Rather than simply buying finished honey, we are involved throughout the journey from hive to jar, giving us greater control over quality and the way our bees and honey are cared for.

Paul and Sheryl are still involved in the business more than four decades after buying those first hives, and ethical beekeeping remains central to how Steens operates.

It is also why our honey is still packed in New Zealand.

From a small family beekeeping operation, Steens has grown into an international brand, with dedicated online stores serving markets including New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. You can also find Steens on the shelves of selected major retailers, including Erewhon in California and Waitrose in the UK.

The jars may have travelled a little further than they did in 1982, but what is inside them remains firmly connected to where the story began: New Zealand.

What makes Steens Mānuka honey different?

One of the biggest differences is something you can actually see and taste.

Steens Mānuka honey is raw and unpasteurised. We don't use high heat or fine filtration to create a perfectly uniform honey. In fact we do the opposite. We use our unique Crushed Wholecomb Technology™ to retain more of what naturally exists within the honeycomb.

The process was developed by Paul and his brothers after Paul and Sheryl noticed that the honey they extracted from their own hives looked and tasted very different from many commercially produced honeys.

Rather than removing the naturally occurring particles within the comb through fine filtration, our process retains naturally occurring bee bread and pollen. Steens reports that its Raw Mānuka Honey contains up to 15 times more pollen than other leading Mānuka honey brands, based on total pollen concentration.

It is also why Steens honey can have a naturally grainy, crystallised texture. It isn't a flaw. It is part of keeping our honey minimally processed and closer to its natural state.

In simple terms? We don't try to make nature look perfect. We try to keep more of what nature put there in the first place.

Certified New Zealand Mānuka honey

With Mānuka honey, what is written on the jar matters.

Every batch of Steens Mānuka honey is independently tested for authenticity according to strict New Zealand standards, with our monofloral strengths carrying the internationally recognised UMF™ certification.

Steens is UMF certified, Certified Glyphosate Free, Non-GMO Certified and NZ FernMark licensed. Our honey is also 100% natural, antibiotic free, preservative free and contains no added sugar.

UMF certification is particularly important when choosing genuine Mānuka honeybecause it verifies key markers associated with authentic New Zealand Mānuka, rather than relying on marketing claims alone.

One honey. Plenty of ways to use it.

Sheryl has long summed up Mānuka honey with a simple philosophy: one for the table, one for the bathroom and one for the first aid kit.

And that versatility is exactly why we created the Steens Collections.

Table Collection: spread, sweeten and bake

The Steens Table Collection includes our more accessible everyday strengths, including MGO 50+, MGO 85+ and MGO 100+.

Think breakfast, baking and everyday natural sweetness. Drizzle it over oats, yoghurt or pancakes, spread it on toast, blend it into smoothies or use it as an alternative to refined sugar in recipes.

Available in jars and convenient squeezy formats, Table is Mānuka made for everyday eating.

Ritual Collection: your daily dose

Our Ritual Collection steps things up with UMF 10+ (MGO 263+), UMF 13+ (MGO 400+) and UMF 15+ (MGO 515+).

These strengths are designed to become part of a daily wellness ritual. Take a spoonful straight from the jar, add it to a smoothie, drizzle it over breakfast or make it part of your pre-workout routine.

For many Steens customers, this is the jar that lives permanently within reach.

Care Collection: protect, nurture, nourish

Our Care Collection contains some of our highest-strength Mānuka honeys, including UMF 20+ (MGO 830+) and UMF 24+ (MGO 1122+).

These highly concentrated strengths are the ones to reach for when you want to make Mānuka honey a more targeted part of your wellness or skincare routine.

Take it raw, straight from the spoon, or incorporate it into topical skincare rituals. Because these are our premium high-strength honeys, we recommend enjoying them raw rather than using them for everyday sweetening or cooking.

More than 40 years later, we're still beekeepers

A lot has changed since Paul and Sheryl bought their first three beehives in 1982.

Steens honey now travels from New Zealand to kitchens, breakfast tables and bathroom cabinets around the world. Our collections have expanded, our jars have evolved and far more people understand what makes genuine Mānuka honey so special.

But the fundamental idea behind Steens hasn't changed.

We still believe in looking after our bees. We still believe in keeping our honey as close to nature as possible. We still believe that bee bread and pollen belong in the jar rather than being filtered away. And we still believe that knowing who produced your Mānuka honey, and how they produced it, matters.

From three beehives to more than 40 years of family beekeeping, Steens has quite literally been built from the hive up.

And we're still just as passionate about what the bees create.