Honeycomb in New Zealand: where to buy it, what it costs, how to eat it

Where can you buy honeycomb in New Zealand, and what does it cost?

Real honeycomb in New Zealand is sold mostly by beekeepers' own online shops, farmers' markets and delis, not by supermarkets. On 3 November 2026, five NZ honeycomb listings ranged from $57 to $103 a kilo, roughly three to five times the price of ordinary supermarket honey.

What honeycomb is

Honeycomb, or comb honey, is honey still sealed in the beeswax cells the bees built to store it. Instead of spinning the honey out of the frame in an extractor, the beekeeper cuts the capped comb into blocks and packs it as it is. Nothing is heated or filtered, because there is no way to do either without destroying the comb, which makes honeycomb the least processed honey you can buy.

In New Zealand the word has a second meaning. “Honeycomb” is also the crunchy sponge toffee known here as hokey pokey, which is why a [Chelsea Sugar](https://www.chelsea.co.nz) recipe turns up among the honey producers when you search for it. This page is about the bee-made kind.

Where to buy honeycomb in NZ, and what it costs

These are the honeycomb listings that appear on the first page of Google for “honeycomb nz”, with each producer's own price and pack size. Per-kilo prices are worked out from the listed size so packs can be compared.

For comparison, Egmont's own 1kg jar of pure honey was $20 a kilo at Woolworths in late October 2026, and Woolworths' house-brand liquid honey $14.78 a kilo. So Egmont's honeycomb costs about five times its jarred honey by weight. The honey price guide has the full supermarket table.

Does Woolworths sell honeycomb?

Not as comb honey. On 3 November 2026 a search for “honeycomb”, “honey comb” and “comb honey” on woolworths.co.nz returned only honeycomb-flavoured products: chocolate bars, ice creams, yoghurt, nut bars and protein bars. No actual comb was listed. Some individual stores, delis and farm shops carry local comb, but online the beekeepers' own shops are the reliable route.

Why honeycomb costs so much more than jarred honey

• The bees have to build new wax for every block sold. Making wax takes the colony a great deal of honey and time, and a frame cut for comb cannot be put back in the hive to be refilled.
• Only fully capped, evenly drawn frames are good enough to sell as comb, so a beekeeper gets fewer saleable frames than they would extracting.
• It is cut and packed by hand, and the packs are small, so packaging and labour are a bigger share of each gram.
• It is heavy for its size and fragile, which pushes up courier costs for online orders.

Can you eat the wax?

Yes. The whole comb is edible: you chew it, the honey comes out, and the wax is left as a soft, gummy mouthful that most people swallow and some spit out. Beeswax is a permitted food additive in the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code (it is additive number 901, used as a glazing agent on sweets and fruit). It passes through without being digested.

How to eat honeycomb

• Cut a slice with a warm knife and eat it on toast, crumpets or a cracker, wax and all.
• Put a block on a cheese board next to a hard or blue cheese; the wax holds the honey so it does not run.
• Spoon it over Greek yoghurt, porridge or vanilla ice cream.
• Drop a piece into hot tea and fish the wax out, or chew it after the tea is finished.

How to store honeycomb

Keep it in its sealed container in the pantry, away from heat and sun. Do not refrigerate it: cold makes the honey in the cells set faster and the wax turns brittle. Comb honey keeps as long as jarred honey, and our guides on storing honey and whether honey expires apply to it as well.

Clover comb in particular often goes white and grainy inside the cells after a few weeks. That is the same crystallisation that happens in a jar (why honey goes hard), not a fault. It is still good to eat, and gentle warmth will not rescue it the way it does a jar, because it melts the wax too.

What to check before you buy

• The floral source. Clover comb is mild and pale; bush and mānuka comb is darker and stronger. The honey types guide describes each flavour.
• Whether a mānuka comb states a tested grade. If there is no UMF or MGO number on the label, you are paying for the comb and the flavour, not a graded mānuka.
• Pack size against price. A 100g block can look cheap and still cost $125 a kilo, more than anything on the table above.
• Who kept the bees. Honeycomb cannot be blended, so it is always from one apiary and one season, and a producer should be able to tell you where.

More guides

• Why honey goes hard, and how to bring it back
• Raw honey in New Zealand: what it means, where to buy it, what it costs
• How to read a New Zealand honey label
• How to store honey (and why it doesn't go off)
• Does honey expire? Best-before dates on NZ honey, explained
• Can babies have honey? Why NZ advice says wait until 12 months
• Is honey vegan? No, and what NZ vegans use instead
• How to tell if honey is real, and why the home tests don't work
• Buying honey direct from a New Zealand beekeeper
• Clover, multifloral and liquid honey: what's the difference?
• Coromandel honey: what the bees work on the peninsula, and how to buy it
• The best honey in New Zealand, by what you want it for
• How much honey costs in New Zealand
• Creamed honey vs runny honey: what the difference actually is
• New Zealand honey by region: what each part of the country produces