Beekeeper to pay victims

A hobbyist beekeeper whose toxic honey made several people violently sick says he will continue making honey after being spared a fine in court yesterday.

Kevin John Prout, of Projen Apiaries, in Whangamata, was instead ordered to pay $3350 in reparation to his victims when he appeared for sentence in the Waihi District Court.

He faced three charges of selling food unfit for human consumption and a fourth relating to the labelling on the honey, which was produced and sold on the Coromandel in early 2008. The maximum fine he could have faced was $3000 and $5000 respectively.

Prout told the Waikato Times the sentence was fair and said he hoped his experience would alert future honey hobbyists to the risks related to the tutu plant.

Prout said he got into beekeeping because bees were an amazing insect.

"I look forward to putting out a good, safe product again in the future."

The New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) charged Prout this year after 22 people who consumed his honeycomb at the beginning of 2008 became sick.

His honey was later found to contain high levels of the toxic substance tutin, which ends up in honey after bees feed on honeydew from the tutu plant.

The court was told that Prout himself became extremely ill after eating his honey.

He became delirious and thought he was having a stroke. He spent three days in hospital undergoing tests, but nobody recognised his illness as tutin poisoning. So Prout went home, packaged the honey and sold it.

Defence counsel Mark Hammond said Prout did not know his honey was toxic.

Judge Thomas Ingram criticised the NZFSA, saying it was incumbent on the NZFSA to ensure people who registered hives knew and made plans to deal with tutin poisoning.

- NICOLA BRENNAN, Waikato Times