Single-origin · chemical-free · South East Melbourne
Where our honey comes from — single-origin raw honey from five South East Melbourne apiaries
Every jar of our single-origin raw honey comes from one apiary, in one named corner of South East Melbourne — so what you taste is that one place, in that one season. From the old gardens of Berwick up into the forest of the Dandenong foothills, each site gives the bees a different landscape to work. Every jar comes from rescued, chemical-free colonies, and helps fund the next rescue.
Our honey has an address. Five of them — Berwick, Harkaway, Narre Warren East, Beaconsfield Upper and Belgrave South.
What “single-origin” actually means here
A honeybee works within a few kilometres of her hive, so the nectar she brings home is a fingerprint of that exact area — its gardens, street trees, creek lines and bush. Honey gathered on the edge of eucalypt forest is genuinely different from honey gathered among suburban gardens, even a few suburbs away. We keep each apiary’s honey separate, jar by jar, so you can choose the place you want and know exactly where it came from.
Our five sites climb from the settled lowland around Berwick, through the semi-rural foothills of Harkaway and Narre Warren East, up into the hill bush of Beaconsfield Upper and the foothill forest of Belgrave South. Every hive sits on private land, hosted by locals generous enough to give the bees a home. Each region’s honey also shifts through the year as different plants come into flower — more on the trees behind it on our Australian nectar sources page.
Berwick
Berwick is our home base, and where BeesFriend began. It’s one of the oldest settled towns in the south-east — the town grew out of the old Cardinia Creek run in the 1850s — and that age shows in its gardens: mature street trees, long-established backyards, and the green line of the Cardinia Creek corridor running along its eastern edge.
On Berwick’s doorstep sits Wilson Botanic Park, 39 hectares of former bluestone quarry now planted with more than a thousand native and exotic species. Its old quarry walls also yielded fossils recognised as some of the oldest evidence of eucalypts in Australia — which makes it a fitting neighbour for a beehive. Berwick honey is our garden honey, gathered from a wide mix of flowers, and an easy place to begin if you’re new to single-origin honey.
Harkaway
A few kilometres north of Berwick the land starts to rise. Harkaway, settled in the 1860s, sits at around 170 metres in the first of the foothills — larger blocks, mature trees, hobby gardens and patches of remnant bush, in a landscape the City of Casey protects, along with the Cardinia Creek valley, from being built out.
The forage here is looser and more varied than in town: garden flowers alongside the native eucalypts and wattles of the foothills, spread out across the season. It’s the step between our garden honey and our bush honey.
Narre Warren East
Narre Warren East is barely a village — a few hundred people in the green wedge between Harkaway, Lysterfield and Belgrave South. Its tree-lined roads form part of a wildlife corridor running from Lysterfield Park to Cardinia Reservoir, with stringybark eucalypts, paperbarks and Blackwood wattles along the verges.
Next door, Lysterfield Park holds one of the richest mixes of eucalypts in reach of any of our hives: native Yellow Box, Narrow-leaved Peppermint, Stringybark, Manna Gum, River Red Gum, Swamp Gum and Long-leaved Box, alongside old plantings of Spotted Gum, Southern Mahogany, Sugar Gum and more. Different gums flower at different times of year, which gives the bees here a long run of eucalypt blossom to draw on.
Beaconsfield Upper
Up in the hills above Beaconsfield, at around 160 metres, the country turns to treed acreage and bush. The early settlers largely passed these hills by — the terrain was steep and the soils poor — and that is exactly why so much native vegetation survives here today.
The foothill forest of this area carries a flowering understorey worth a bee’s attention: Silver Banksia, Burgan, Blackwood, Myrtle Wattle and Bushy Needlewood beneath the eucalypts, with Cardinia Creek and its restored bush reserve down the slope. Beaconsfield Upper honey is hill-country honey — bush first, with country gardens in between.
Belgrave South
Belgrave South sits on the southern edge of the Dandenong Ranges, and it is our most distinctly Australian site. This is foothill forest: tall Messmate and Narrow-leaf Peppermint over a middle storey of wattles, native peas and tea-tree, with Mountain Grey Gum on the damper slopes and Manna Gum and Silver Wattle along the creek lines. The hives here are surrounded by bush, not gardens.
One of our Belgrave South sites is a permaculture block that has been kept free of chemicals for some forty years — about as clean a place to keep bees as South East Melbourne has to offer.
How our honey sets
Whichever region you choose, our honey stays runny for a good while. It sets slowly — over three to four months — and softly: not into a hard block, but into a smooth, semi-firm paste you can spoon straight from the jar. That slow, gentle set is raw honey behaving naturally, with its pollen and enzymes still in it. Here’s why honey sets at all, and if you’d like it spreadable from day one, that’s what our creamed honey is for.
We’d rather you taste the difference between regions than read our description of it. Try two side by side — the garden honey of Berwick against the bush honey of Belgrave South — and the idea of single-origin makes itself clear.
Which region is available right now?
Every batch is single-origin and small, so each region comes into stock as its apiary produces a surplus through the season. Pick your region on the raw honey page, or get in touch and we’ll tell you what’s flowing now.
Pick up from Berwick by appointment, find us at the Elwood Farmers Market, or have it posted — we send to every state and territory except Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania, whose biosecurity rules protect their own bees. Every jar, whichever region, is made to our raw honey standard and helps fund the next rescue.