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A "Super El Nino" is coming this summer. Here's what it actually means for honey.

Writer: Team Mānuka Orchard
Team Mānuka Orchard
10 minutes ago
4 min read

If you’ve seen the headlines lately, they are saying that El Niño is back, and the forecasters aren't mucking around with the language. Earth Sciences New Zealand (the team formerly known as NIWA) officially declared El Niño conditions on 2nd July, and they expect this one to rival the five strongest events on record - 1972, 1982, 1991, 1997 and 2015 - and to use their words, "considerable potential to exceed them all."

A large digital billboard that says El Nino Ahead

This means that those peak conditions are expected right over our summer 2026/27

honey season.


So what does that actually mean for beekeepers, or if your land grows mānuka? Headlines about droughts and "super" weather events tend to paint one picture. While the honey production story is more interesting than that - and, based on what's happened in past El Nino summers, quite a bit more hopeful.


What the forecasters are actually saying about El Nino

El Niño starts in the tropical Pacific, where warmer-than-average ocean temperatures shift global weather patterns. For New Zealand, the historical pattern is well understood: more westerly winds, drier than usual conditions in the north and east of both islands, and wetter conditions in the west and lower South Island.


Earth Sciences New Zealand's outlook already leans that way - drier than normal from Northland down through Auckland, Bay of Plenty and Taranaki, drier along the east coast from Gisborne to Canterbury, wetter from Westland to Southland, and windier than usual for much of the country through spring.


NIWA maps of rainfall in NZ
Map above: brown (green) colours indicate below (above) normal seasonal rainfall.

Worth pointing out is what their own scientists keep saying: no El Niño is average. The 1972/73 event brought nationwide dryness. The 1997/98 event, of similar strength, kept the dry far more regionally confined. So no real pattern.


What it means at the hive

Mānuka gives us a short window - a flowering of roughly four to six weeks somewhere between November and January, depending on the region and the season. What that window needs is warmth, settled weather, and flying hours for the bees. What ruins it is prolonged rain, cold snaps and storms at exactly the wrong moment.

A drier, more settled, high-pressure summer is often good beekeeping weather. Bees fly, while flowers hold, and harvests happen on time. That's the part of the El Niño story that rarely makes a headline.

The genuine risks sit at the extremes. If the dry sticks around for too long, plants shut down nectar production to conserve moisture - with the east coast and the South Island high country knowing this pattern well. Persistent westerly wind can cost flying hours on exposed sites. And dry country means real fire risk around apiaries and access tracks.


What history actually says

Here's the thing to remember; The last two significant El Niño summers were good honey seasons.


The 2015/16 season - one of the five strongest El Niño events on record - produced what was then a record national honey crop of nearly 20,000 tonnes, according to MPI's figures.


The 2023/24 season, our most recent El Niño summer, was described across the industry as a bounce-back. After the washout of 2022/23 - (a La Niña season) when the national crop fell at least 40 percent - beekeepers across most of the country reported above-average returns. Taranaki saw one of the best mānuka flowerings many could remember. 


That's not to say everyone had a good run. The Mackenzie Basin and parts of Central Otago went through drought that season and crops there suffered badly. Regional variation is the rule in this country, and a strong El Niño will sharpen it. But if you're weighing up which way the risk cuts for honey, the record is fairly clear: it's the wet, stormy seasons that have hurt this industry most - not the dry, settled ones.


Getting ahead of it

The forecasters have given the sector something valuable here: months of warning. A few things worth doing with that time.


Think about water - for bees as much as stock. Hives on dry sites need reliable water sources nearby. Think about site selection, and whether exposed, windy blocks are worth the same investment this season as sheltered ones. Watch feed reserves late in the season if the dry runs long. And plan your extraction early - a good season arriving on time, or early, is a nice problem to have, but only if the capacity is booked.


That last one is where we live. Whatever this summer delivers, the honey still needs to be extracted, tested, graded and stored properly to be worth what it should be. Our job is making sure the season's work - yours and the bees' - doesn't lose value after it leaves the hive.


We can't control the weather, but this industry has never needed perfect seasons - it needs people set up to make the most of the good ones and ride out the rough ones. That's what we've been building for, and if the forecasters are right, this summer might be one worth being ready for.


If you want to talk through the season ahead - extraction bookings, storage, or what an El Niño summer might mean on your sites - get in touch with the Manuka Orchard team.


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