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Why is using Irish ingredients important to your company?

We don’t use any ingredients, all the honey we produce is 100% made by my bees in my apiaries around South Dublin and North Wicklow. As its seasonal, when it’s sold out its gone until the next season. I don’t and have no plans on ever using anyone else’s honey. I know my bees and honey and exactly where each jar comes from and that’s very important for me.

Support these Irish producers who are passionate about bees, and discover some locally-made honey and beeswax products. Bees are fascinating, play such a vital role in our eco-system and honey and beeswax have endless uses. These creatures are really incredible, and there are Irish producers and makers all over the country who are making the most of what bees have to offer. Here are some of the gorgeous, locally produced products to buy from beekeepers across the country, and the experts who are sharing their knowledge and passion for beekeeping.

Ireland has no shortage of home-grown websites to buy presents from this holiday season.

Looking for Dublin honey? Then look no further than Olly’s Farm, which has a range of 100 per cent raw Irish honeys, including Dalkey Blosson and Dublin Mountains Heather, from apiaries around Cos Dublin and Wicklow.

The mark of a really good gourmet gift hamper is that there’s something left to appreciate when all of the edibles have been enjoyed. With Powerscourt Distillery’s Fercullen Gold whiskey and food hamper, that could be the Soilse soy wax candle, the Fercullen whiskey tasting glasses, the Spotify soft Irish music playlist, or the two-for-one voucher for a distillery tour and tasting.

Here are some of the great Irish business we featured on tonight's show. Guaranteed Irish hamper

Ryan's Picks - Olly got a mention.

We have been overwhelmed, in the best possible way, by the response to our original list, a few weeks ago, of 100 Irish websites where you can buy lovely, unique and good-value presents in the run-up to Christmas.

Almost as soon as it appeared, business owners and many of their customers emailed us, tweeted us, sent us Instagram messages and contacted us on Facebook to champion more Irish companies doing the business online.

Olly’s Farm honey began when Olly Nolan and his partner bought a house with some land in the Dublin Mountains, close to the County Wicklow border, with a dream of becoming self-sufficient.

He hadn’t intended starting a honey business. Indeed, when he moved into the smallholding, he had only been beekeeping for about a month and had only planned on keeping a couple of hives for his own use.

Almost eight years later, however, Olly’s Farm honey is in great demand. He keeps apiaries around South County Dublin and North County Wicklow and he makes that local honey available in those areas.

Beekeeper & smallholder in the Dublin Mountains producing award winning 100% raw Irish #honey In September 2012, after a lot of searching around Dublin, myself and my partner Chris bought a house in the Dublin mountains in the valley of Glenasmole.

WITH so many small businesses badly impacted by the spread of the coronavirus, Dublin-based beekeeper Olly Nolan found his honey business was absolutely buzzing.

Olly started beekeeping in 2012 and since joining the SuperValu Food Academy in 2016 his farm honey has become a firm favourite with customers.

Producing what's been acclaimed as 'the best honey in Ireland' wasn't on the agenda when Olly Nolan began farming a smallholding on the outskirts of the capital eight years ago.

With businesses across Ireland forced to innovate and adapt to survive the impact of Covid-19, support services for SMEs and start-ups are also changing to meet new and increased demand. Rolling out new Government measures to support local business-owners and entrepreneurs, Local Enterprise Office South Dublin is today (14.04.2020) inviting eligible businesses to take up Business Continuity and Trading Online Voucher schemes, worth up to €2,500 each.

Olly started his 8.5 acre smallholding in August 2012 with his partner Chris and since then have been developing it into an ecologically run self sufficient farm with nature and wildlife in mind. They converted a disused sand arena into an organic vegetable garden, planted an orchard with mainly traditional fruit trees and keep rare breed animals from their small herd of Irish Dexters to a couple of rare breed pigs for the freezer. They have also leased a number of lands in the area.

Business Supporters of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan.

The Beekeeper

This cocktail is a celebration of our resident Beekeeper, Olly Nolan (of Olly’s Farm) and our continued support of local innovators as well as the importance of supporting biodiversity in local food production.

In May 2018 a small collection of honey bees were set up with a new home on the roof of our Teeling Whiskey Distillery with two hives to start and more planned for the future. During the season we were lucky enough to join Olly in our bee-keeper suits getting to know our new friends and help carefully extract the raw honey produced.

Olly farms in the valley of Glenasmole in the Dublin Mountains. He's new to farming, and talks about his approach to producing food and habitats for wildlife on his land.

Olly started his 8.5 acre smallholding in August 2012 with his partner Chris and since then have been developing it into an ecologically run self sufficient farm with nature and wildlife in mind. They have planted over 1,000 native hedging and trees. They converted a disused sand arena into an organic vegetable garden, planted an orchard with mainly traditional fruit trees and keep rare breed animals from their small herd of Irish Dexters to a couple of rare breed pigs for the freezer. They have also leased a number of lands in the area.

Oliver Nolan, farms as a smallholder in Glenasmole, Dublin 24, alongside his partner Chris, with the main focus on the production of local raw honey and grass fed Dexter beef.
He commenced tweeting over a year and a half ago as @OllysFarm.
This week, he will take the reins of the @SmallholderIRL Twitter Account on Monday 11th April and will tweet right through until Sunday evening .

Our spirits were light despite the overcast morning. We were driving into the Dublin Mountains on our first full day in Ireland, and after recovering a bit from jet lag, we were full of energy. We (my boyfriend, myself, and another friend) were headed to visit Olly’s Farm. I was a bit anxious never having randomly visited a farm before, especially run by a stranger I met on the Internet. And my friend had never been in Ireland before so I also wanted to ensure he enjoyed the trip. The pressure was on.

Wild honeybees have been all but wiped out due to a mite introduced into Ireland in the 1990s, but in the Dublin Mountains, a small organic farm is creating a bit of a buzz. In addition to the farm’s offerings – like his grass fed and finished rare breed Irish Dexter cattle – the farm’s owner, Olly, has been coaxing honey from thousands of stinging bees in a tradition that goes back centuries – and selling it raw.

Honey has some great health benefits, for example, it’s full of polyphenols – powerful disease-fighting antioxidants – but it’s raw honey that you want and not the clear, processed stuff.

Raw honey is a good natural substitute for refined sugar, so if you’re putting sugar in your tea or commercial honey in your smoothies, why not try replacing both with a raw honey substitute?