Team effort changed busy-bee industry: apiculturist
Milburn beekeeper and apiculture industry stalwart Allan McCaw (known as Allen) has received an MNZM for his services to apiculture
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Allen McCaw honoured...
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Here is what Cliff Van Eaton had to say about Allen in his book "Manuka":
Faced with all these sorts of problems, the beekeeping industry decided to do something that might seem obvious, but back then was a remarkably innovative idea: it came up with a plan.
The astute and congenial president of the National Beekeepers’ Association at the time, Allen McCaw, from the small settlement of Milburn in the far south of the South Island, convened a series of meetings, and brought together a number of like-minded beekeepers from around the country. There was certainly some enmity in the organisation left over from the HMA battles. But there was also a remarkable level of support, perhaps created by that very same co-operative approach to honey marketing that had gone on for so many years.
Using a set of processes that at the time was beginning to take hold in New Zealand businesses (as well as in the Ministry of Agriculture), Allen and his colleagues carried out a SWOT analysis ( Strengths/ Weakness/ Opportunities/ Threats), created some goals (one of which had for many years already been the association’s motto: ‘Better Beekeeping, Better Marketing’), and a set of quite specific objectives that were reviewed on a regular basis.
One of those ‘Management by Objectives’ was to set up a marketing committee, with the express purpose of doing as much as they could to increase the price of honey. As it turned out, the committee eventually succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams (although it’s very doubtful if it ever got the credit it deserved).
- Manuka: The Biography of an Extraordinary Honey, pg. 67-68.
And if you want to learn more about the industry planning that took place back then, you can read:
www.beekeeping.nz
Faced with all these sorts of problems, the beekeeping industry decided to do something that might seem obvious, but back then was a remarkably innovative idea: it came up with a plan.
The astute and congenial president of the National Beekeepers’ Association at the time, Allen McCaw, from the small settlement of Milburn in the far south of the South Island, convened a series of meetings, and brought together a number of like-minded beekeepers from around the country. There was certainly some enmity in the organisation left over from the HMA battles. But there was also a remarkable level of support, perhaps created by that very same co-operative approach to honey marketing that had gone on for so many years.
Using a set of processes that at the time was beginning to take hold in New Zealand businesses (as well as in the Ministry of Agriculture), Allen and his colleagues carried out a SWOT analysis ( Strengths/ Weakness/ Opportunities/ Threats), created some goals (one of which had for many years already been the association’s motto: ‘Better Beekeeping, Better Marketing’), and a set of quite specific objectives that were reviewed on a regular basis.
One of those ‘Management by Objectives’ was to set up a marketing committee, with the express purpose of doing as much as they could to increase the price of honey. As it turned out, the committee eventually succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams (although it’s very doubtful if it ever got the credit it deserved).
- Manuka: The Biography of an Extraordinary Honey, pg. 67-68.
And if you want to learn more about the industry planning that took place back then, you can read:
Industry Planning
The National Beekeepers’ Association (NBA) carried out an industry-wide, formal, strategic planning process for about a decade through the 1980s and 1990s. It served the industry very well… F…
www.beekeeping.nz