A court judgment, released by Justice Jan-Marie Doogue, doesn t disclose the relationship between the two parties. For 100 years, access to the Totaranui property had been over the Makakaho property, and Gerald Pearce sought an interim injunction to enable access over his neighbour s land to tend to Totaranui s stock and beehives. Roger Pearce opposed the order, but made some concessions as to limited access that could be granted under certain terms. These included a book for signing in and out. The access had never been legally formalised and Gerald Pearce s entitlement to use it was revoked when his neighbour entered the mānuka industry shortly after 2016.
Nirvana claims Makakaho poached mānuka by “boundary stacking”, putting hives close to the boundary between the two properties. Nirvana estimated Makakaho putting out 600 hives meant bees were going over boundaries to compete with other hives. That resulted in a loss of $612,000 in the value of mānuka honey, while the overstocking of hives by Makakaho caused $802,000 of losses over the four-week flowering season, Nirvana said. With the 2020 flowering season coming up, Nirvana wanted the courts to restrict Makakaho’s honey operation by making it only have 136 hives, making it keep hives 300 metres away from the boundary and ensure it only has one hive per hectare of mānuka.