Taste it once and the question comes quickly: what are the bees working on? The answer is a forest that grows nowhere else, on an island in the Coral Sea where beekeeping has stayed small and unhurried. In 2025 the honey it produces took gold at France's national agricultural awards in Paris.

An island that flowers three times a year

Lifou is the largest of the Loyalty Islands, 190 kilometres off the main island of New Caledonia. Seen from the air it is almost entirely forest, broken by coral cliffs and a handful of villages. Farming is small-scale, pesticide use is minimal, and the endemic flora is left largely to itself.

The bees work blue cherry, avocado and litchi blossom, alongside species that appear in no European hive. In this climate the trees flower two or three times a year, so the colonies feed on a nectar flow that is both generous and constantly shifting. New Caledonia is also one of the few territories still free of Varroa destructor, the mite that weakens colonies almost everywhere else.

What is in the jar

UMA honey is polyfloral. Colour runs from pale gold to deep amber depending on the apiary and the season, the texture turns creamy as it crystallises naturally, and the profile stays soft and fruity with very little bitterness.

Each apiary is extracted, matured and jarred on its own. Nothing is blended into a single house profile, so every lot keeps its own character and traces back to one site on the island. Frames come off only once fully capped.

In 2025 this honey took a gold medal at France's national agricultural awards in Paris, the Concours Général Agricole, where products are scored blind by professional juries. La Case du Miel took silver the year before and has been collecting medals there since 2017. It was the only producer from New Caledonia among the 52 French overseas products awarded gold that year.

One honey, several ranges

The range is straightforward: 250 g and 30 g jars, gift sets pairing the two, a squeezer, and bee pollen.

The same honey reads differently depending on where it lands. On a gourmet shelf it belongs with the single-origin products people choose for the story as much as for the taste. In hospitality the small jar works on a breakfast tray or in a room, where a Pacific island origin says more about the house than a standard portion pack. In gifting it carries a box on its own or alongside another French speciality. Bee pollen opens a different conversation altogether, on the health food and supplement side, and the company is looking at cosmetics, where a traceable island honey with a clean environmental record makes a strong ingredient story.

Jarring, labelling and branding all happen in house, which leaves formats and private label open to discussion rather than fixed.

Twenty beekeepers under one roof

Paul Neköeng and Philippe Xuma founded La Case du Miel in 2019 around a simple observation. The beekeepers of Lifou knew how to produce exceptional honey and had no way to bring it to market properly. The company buys their harvest by the kilo at a strong price and takes on everything downstream: collection, extraction, jarring, labelling, branding and sales. The beekeeper stays with the bees.

Four partners at the start, around twenty today. La Case du Miel translates as the honey house, and in Drehu, the language of Lifou, uma means house. Xuma runs production. He spent thirteen years in the Caledonian beekeeping sector, is an accredited apiary health officer, and trains the network across the island.

He cannot walk every apiary every week, so the network runs partly on sensors. Hives report colony activity, temperature and humidity back to his phone, which tells him when a site is ready to harvest and when it should be left alone. Fewer than one beekeeper in five in Europe uses anything of the kind. The colonies are disturbed less, the timing is sharper, and every lot leaves the island with a continuous record behind it.

A French product from the South Pacific

New Caledonia is a French territory, which puts this honey in an unusual position. The flora is tropical and the origin is genuinely rare, while the company behind it is French and the labelling is French. You are sourcing an exotic origin from a French supplier, with the contractual footing that comes with it.

Limited by the island

Lifou honey is an island production and the volumes reflect that. Twenty beekeepers on one island will never fill a supermarket programme, which is exactly why the origin is worth having for anyone building a range that has to stand out.

The company already ships abroad. In 2025 it represented New Caledonia at FHA Food & Beverage in Singapore alongside Business France, and came home with a first export order of 100 kilos for a fine food distributor.

The UMA - La Case du Miel storefront is being finalised on the Business France Marketplace. The contact form on the supplier page is open now for volumes, formats, private label and export terms.