What it is
Island Beehive is the trading name and the visitor-facing brand of The Kangaroo Island Ligurian Bee Co. Same business, two names. The Kangaroo Island Ligurian Bee Co is the full legal name behind the honey, the ice cream, the nougat, the skincare and the rest of the bee products. Island Beehive is what is on the shop sign in Kingscote, and the name most guests already know.
The business was founded by Peter Davis in 2001 as one of South Australia's first organic honey producers. In 2020 Peter's son Brenton and his partner Verity purchased the business; Peter still works alongside them. Brenton and Verity also run Little Sahara Adventure Centre and Kangaroo Island Outdoor Action down at Vivonne Bay, so all three Plan KI partner operators are the same family. The team manages around 1,200 hives moved around the island according to flora and seasons, produces an average of 65 tonnes of honey each year, and hosts around 30,000 visitors annually at the Kingscote facility.
The site at 59 Playford Hwy, Kingscote is the working visitor centre and shop. Open daily 9am to 5pm and only closed on Christmas Day. Large bus parking, disability access, and a full retail floor where you can taste, talk to the team and buy direct from the producer.
The Ligurian story
Kangaroo Island holds the world's last remaining pure-bred population of Ligurian bees. In 1885 the South Australian Parliament passed an Act declaring KI a sanctuary for the strain, the first protected bee sanctuary in the world. The quarantine has been in force ever since. Every other Ligurian colony on the planet has been cross-bred since. KI is the only place the original strain still exists in its untouched form.
That is the story behind everything in the shop. The honey, the ice cream, the skincare, all of it comes from hives that are direct descendants of the bees Italian beekeeper August Fiebig brought to South Australia in 1881. The strain has stayed pure here for 140 years.
What you can do at Island Beehive
The visitor centre is set up for guests to drop in for as long or as little as they want. There are four ways to spend time on site.
- Walk-in for tasting and the shop. Most days, just walk through. The team will talk you through the range and you can taste before you buy. No booking, no charge.
- Behind The Scenes Tour. 30 minutes, $27 per adult, $15 child (5 to 12), free under-5s. Runs four times a day at 10am, 11am, 1:30pm and 2:30pm. Indoor, disability accessible, includes a guided walk-through of the facility, a tasting and a complimentary gift. Not in the group rates.
- Beekeeping Experience Tour. 90 minutes, $157 per person, $127 child (6 to 12), ages 6+. Enquiry only. The hands-on session at the hives, where you suit up and work alongside a real beekeeper.
- Day in a Life of a Beekeeper. Six hours, $997 per person, ages 8+. Enquiry only. The full-day version of the hands-on experience, for guests with a serious interest in beekeeping.
For the two hands-on tours, closed footwear and socks are essential, and the team asks guests to avoid heavily scented products or perfume on the morning of the tour. Any bee allergy must be disclosed at the time of booking.
Awards and certifications
Island Beehive has won TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice for 11+ consecutive years, which is a fair signal of what the guest experience is like in practice. On the production side, the operation is certified to B-QUAL and HACCP food-safety standards, Dairy Safe for the honey ice cream, and NASAA for organic beekeeping. On the tourism side, they hold Advanced Eco Certified and Climate Action Leader status with EcoTourism Australia, plus TICSA accreditation.
That is a stack of certifications that very few honey producers in Australia hold together. It is also why the on-site experience feels more polished than the average farm gate, with proper viewing access into the production rooms, a structured shop floor and trained guides leading the tours.
Where it sits, and what to pair it with
59 Playford Hwy is on the main road into Kingscote, about 13 km from the airport and roughly 65 km from the Penneshaw ferry terminal. It is one of the easiest producers to slot into a trip because it is on the way to almost everywhere on the eastern half of the island. Most guests pair it with Kingscote dinner at Aurora Ozone or the Cygnet Tavern, or with one of the other Kingscote-area producers like KI Spirits at Cygnet River or the oyster racks at American River.
The site has large bus parking and disability access. If you are staying in Kingscote you can walk or drive over in under ten minutes. If you are based further out, the Behind The Scenes Tour times (10am, 11am, 1:30pm, 2:30pm) make it easy to time-box around the drive.
What guests tell us about the visit
The two things that come up most consistently are how friendly the team are and how interesting the Ligurian story turns out to be. Most guests arrive expecting a quick tasting and leave 45 minutes later having done the Behind The Scenes Tour, bought two jars and asked three more questions on the way out. The shop is set up for browsing, the tour guides know the answer to almost anything you can throw at them, and the on-site facility means you are seeing the actual production work happen rather than a recreation of it.
For families, the indoor format makes the Behind The Scenes Tour an easy fit on rainy days or hot afternoons when the south-coast wind is up. Under-5s are free and the 30-minute length suits short attention spans. For couples and older guests, the tasting and shop time often becomes the part of the day everyone talks about later. For the keen, the enquiry-only Beekeeping Experience and Day in a Life are the upgrades.
The honey range, briefly
Single-varietal honey is where Island Beehive separates itself from the supermarket. The everyday end of the range covers Wildflower (lightest, marshmallow and caramel nougat), Cup Gum (bright, fruity, jersey caramel — the cheese-board all-rounder, Sydney Royal 2025 First in Class for the Creamed Organic version), Sugar Gum (salted butterscotch breakfast jar) and Pennington Bay (Ladyfinger biscuit + baked vanilla cheesecake).
The deeper end is where the limited and rare jars live. Boobialla (cacao, cooked stone fruits, smoky), Port Lincoln Mallee (apricot jam + peppery stem ginger, only 592 jars), Eucalyptus Cneorifolia (golden syrup + cracked pepper, Bronze 2025 National Honey Show), and Pink Gum (smooth caramel buttered popcorn).
The rare and heritage end is where the story turns. Eucalyptus Remota is the 2019 harvest only, numbered jars, from trees that mostly burnt in the 2020 fires (7 years to regenerate). Yacca honey only exists because those same 2020 fires stimulated 4-metre Xanthorrhoea flower spikes on a plant that normally takes 20 years to first-flower; the result is around 1500 jars, caramel and candied nuts. Karkalla is the standout, an ultra-rare run of just 17 boxes from the coastal Pig Face plant that Peter Davis last tasted in the 1980s, with grapefruit and chicory notes that pair brilliantly with Greek and goats cheeses. Eucalyptus Cosmophylla, a rare accidental Karkalla blend, takes butterscotch into green vegetal bitterness.
Little Sahara Honey is the one to know if you have any link to the dunes. It is single-varietal honey from bees foraging at the Little Sahara dune system at Vivonne Bay — the same property where the family runs Little Sahara Adventure Centre. The honey tastes of pure Caramilk, buttery and fudgy with dulce de leche and butterscotch, and it is the cleanest cross-brand link in the family operation.
Beyond the single varietals, the shop stocks Premium Raw (unfiltered, antioxidants intact), Pure Comb (straight from the hive), the award-winning Creamed Organic (slow-churn Cup Gum base), honey ice cream and nougat made on site, candles, beeswax, the skincare line, and a Honey Mead made with Maxwell Wines (the largest mead producer in the southern hemisphere). Gift packs and hampers bundle the rare collection or the limited editions for guests who want to take a curated set home.
Buying honey to take home
A 500g jar of creamed Ligurian honey is the everyday option and the best gift to take off the island. Honey is shelf-stable for years and survives checked luggage if you wrap it sensibly, so anything you buy will keep until you finish it. For mainland guests who do not make it across, The Kangaroo Island Ligurian Bee Co ships Australia-wide direct from the producer. That is genuinely the same product as the one on the Kingscote shop floor.
Worth knowing: two dollars from each jar of Eucalyptus Remota honey goes to The Kangaroo Island Bee Fund, a sub-fund of the Australian Communities Foundation administered in South Australia by Foundation SA. Recent producer awards include a 2025 National Honey Award (First Place, Creamed Honey Fine Grain, Open Category), a 2024 South Australian Premier's Food and Beverage Award (Winner, Primary Production) and a 2025 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards finalist (From the Earth, National).