A dozen Wanaka residents had oil portraits of themselves on display at a one-day pop-up exhibition recently.

"Everyone Deserves a Portrait" was the title of the show, featuring works by well-known Luggate artist Stephen Martyn Welch.

It is the time of year when the honey bees are swarming across the thyme-covered slopes of Central Otago.

Unfortunately, the bees are wasting their time, with beekeepers being paid around $4 a kilogram for thyme honey, when it costs around $6 a kilo to make.

A Wanaka aeroplane restoration business has a huge task ahead of it restoring a Beechcraft Staggerwing from the 1930s.

The biplane is in hundreds of bits and pieces and the company is the best fit for the job, having already restored three others in recent years.

A young tramper who got into difficulty near the Haast Pass on Saturday afternoon had to resort to non-digital communication to raise the alarm.

The area is well out of cellphone range, but the tramper managed to signal that she was in trouble from the far side of the flooded Haast River.