Blending the richness of nature with a deep respect for origin, Activist Manuka creates high-grade Manuka honey products for beauty, wellbeing, and immune support. Founded by Gabrielle Mirkin and Luke Harwood, the brand is rooted in Aoteroa, New Zealand, where wild landscapes and seasonal rhythms shape every harvest. Working exclusively with raw, small-batch Manuka honey, Activist preserves the ingredient's natural potency, enzymes, and antibacterial properties. Each product is unadulterated and intentionally crafted. Activist celebrates nature at its most powerful. Always pure. Always purposeful. Always connected to the source.
We spoke with Activist co-founder Gabrielle about what it means t work with small batch Manuka honey, and how the brand works hand in hand with nature throughout every step of the process.
Beehives, Activist Manuka
Activist's products begin with conditions that cannot be manufactured: flowering cycles, weather, surrounding ecosystem. How has that shaped your understanding of what it means to "create"?
Our products are direct from Mother Nature, and we solely rely on her for our amazing high-grade Manuka honey and the Manuka oil that we use. It's extremely seasonal, and we are just at the mercy of the very wild weather in New Zealand. New Zealand is made up of two main islands right at the bottom of the world. They're very long and skinny, so the weather changes a lot during the day as it moves over these small pieces of land. The Manuka tree grows prolifically and wild all over the country; it's not cultivated. It self-seeds, dropping its seeds so that beautiful new growth comes the next season. And the flowering of the tree is super short. It's two to six weeks of the year, at the start of summer in the southern hemisphere, around the start of December. It flowers with these beautiful little white and dusty pink flowers.
We're really at the mercy of the weather, because we want it to be sunny and calm. If there's a lot of rain and wind, the little flowers get knocked off the trees, and the bees can't collect the nectar to make the honey. The same with our Manuka oil; We can only really get it in the summertime because the weather conditions are too unpredictable on the very remote island I source it from for my farmer to be able to pick the leaves and twigs from the trees.
What does letting the environment lead look like in practice?
When it comes to honey harvesting, we really just let the bees do what they do. Apart from positioning the hives in really deep, isolated locations, there is no human interaction for those two to six weeks. You just leave it. You want it to be in a very pristine, deep location. You just leave it and let nature do its work. We also keep our honey in its raw state, and we don't cream or homogenise it from season to season. We love to celebrate the differences in honey, because every season it has a different taste, a different colour, and a different texture. Depending on the region it's from, it has its own unique character. I compare it to a biodynamic wine that's different every season, so is our honey. It really reflects what the weather patterns have been like that season and the area that it's from.
You have a deep connection to New Zealand and understand the land intimately. How does that intimacy shape your production choices?
The story of Activist really began with our own piece of land. I was living and working in New York as an art director at Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and I got really sick, burnt out from putting magazines into the world every month with late-night deadlines. So we went back and lived on our beautiful piece of land in New Zealand, which was covered in native trees, including a lot of Manuka.
Our beekeeper friends asked if they could keep their hives on our land, and we happily agreed. They would give me this beautiful high-grade raw Manuka honey that I used so much in my healing journey. I'd been on antibiotics for a year, and my immune system and gut were completely destroyed, so I would take the medicinal high-grade Manuka honey all the time to help with immune support and to heal my gut. Now we work with beekeepers in the same area; we're friends with them, my husband goes surfing with them. We have a really lovely community on the east coast of New Zealand. That intimacy means we know the land, we know the people, and we know what we're working with.
New Zealand, Courtesy of Activist Manuka
How do the Manuka flowering season, hive placement, bee movement, weather, and surrounding landscape shape the honey before it ever reaches the jar?
It's really the terrain and the season working together. There's a lot of Manuka that grows along the coastline in New Zealand, and honey from that type of area sometimes tastes a little saltier because of the sea. Then you can get Manuka from really high mountainous regions, and it has a completely different flavour profile. So, where the hives sit within the landscape genuinely shapes what ends up in the jar.
The bees in New Zealand are really, truly our local heroes. We don't have colony collapse disorder the way they do in places like the US, where whole hives just die off, and hives are moved around on trucks to pollinate whatever isn't in season. In New Zealand, they don't do that. The bees just flourish. They're healthy, happy hives, and no antibiotics are ever allowed to be used. They're amazing environmental indicators for what is going on in the weather and the landscape on any given day.
Once the hives are in place, how do you determine when the honey is ready to be harvested?
Usually, when the flowering stops. The flowering is only two to six weeks, really short, so usually sometime in December, the season is done, and that's when the honey is extracted. It goes to one of two laboratories in New Zealand that test and certify the amount of methylglyoxal in the Manuka honey. Methylglyoxal is the special antibacterial component that makes Manuka different from any other type of honey. The higher the MGO, the greater the potency and the more the health benefits, both for internal use and for topical wound healing.
We use the 850+ MGO in most of our product line. A lot of other brands say they have Manuka honey in their products without telling you what grade they're using, and most of the time it's probably the very lowest grade, like a 50+. We use 850+ because it's the best for wound healing and topical use.
What happens when a flowering season is shorter or less productive than expected?
Luckily Activist does small-batch Manuka honey. We're a really boutique, small company. A lot of Manuka honey companies are very large, many owned by big offshore companies and very comodity-driven, and they have real problems when there's not a good harvesting season. They can't produce enough honey to meet demand.
Because we're a small batch and work with a very small group of beekeepers, ur honey usually comes from one set of hives, so we can call some of it single origin. We do sometimes have problems with the really high grades; like the 1000+ MGO. We call that a limited edition grade for us. When we run out, we run out until the next season.
Manuka Flower, Courtesy of Activist Manuka
Where do you intentionally reduce human interference in the harvesting process?
With the honey, we really just let the bees be. Some people helicopter into really deep locations, but I don't love the use of helicopters. We're lucky enough to already have access to very isolated regions where the hives can be driven in. Beyond that, you just leave it. There is no human interaction for those two to six weeks. You want it to be in a very deep, pristine location, and then you walk away.
With the Manuka oil, my farmer on the remote island harvests the leaves and twigs by hand. He also handpicks the flowers, only available during those few weeks, from the coastline. He lays them in the sun, under the New Zealand sunshine, and dries them for us. We grind them into a beautiful powder that we use in the soaps, which adds a lovely exfoliating component. After he distils the Manuka oil, the mulch left over from the leaves and twigs goes straight back into his land as compost. It's this very lovely regenerative cycle.
A "less is more" philosophy comes through in both Activist's messaging and the way the company operates. How do you grow a brand while still encouraging people to use only what they need?
Activist is such an extension of our lifestyle, mine and Luke's, and the roots are just from our homeland. We only create products from a real place of use and need, things we actually see the use for in our own daily lives. When we founded Activist, we only wanted to specialise in the super high-grade honeys, the ones with true medicinal healing benefits for internal and topical use. We didn't want to do any low-grade honeys. I also feel like you only need a few Activist products for your overall wellness. You can just have one jar, the 850+ honey, and use it for daily wellbeing, immune support, gut health, and topically as a face cleanser and mask. One retailer said to us: you kind of don't need anything else if you've just got Activist in your life.
We do come from quite a grassroots place in New Zealand and a simple way of living. I love that. I feel like it resonates with a Parisian sensibility too: not piling on loads of different products, keeping it simple, and sticking to something that works. My favourite time of year is December. My husband and I, with our two small children, make this pilgrimage down to New Zealand. We stay in what we call a bach, a very simple beach cottage from the 1970s that we've been slowly doing up. It's where we go as a family to reflect on the year that's been, to plan the year ahead, to put our phones away, swim in the salty Pacific Ocean, walk through the green New Zealand bush, and really come back to ourselves. Live super simply. That's where everything comes back into focus.
When someone uses an Activist product, what do you hope they understand about the land, bees, time and care behind it?
I hope they feel the connection to where it's from: the land, the season, the bees, the people who harvested it by hand. Each jar or product is a direct reflection of a specific place and a specific moment in time. The weather that season, the coastline, the flowering of those trees for just a few weeks of the year. You can't manufacture any of that.
I want people to feel that when they hold an Activist product, they're holding something that couldn't have been rushed or replicated. It took an entire year, a specific piece of land, a community of beekeepers, and the right conditions to arrive in their hands. That's the real value: not just what it does for your body, but what it represents. A true conversation with the land.
Courtesy of Activist Manuka