Olly’s Farm keeps the bees and business buzzing
By Maurice Garvey
STARTING out as a beekeeper in 2012 with one hive on a plot of land in Glenasmole, business has been buzzing for Olly’s Farm.
The raw honey producer has won a number of food industry awards, including two gold stars this week from UK’s Great Taste for their summer blossom and heather honey products.
Olly Nolan and his business partner Christian Zahorski have expanded to nearly 70 hives today, and they plan to double that figure in the years ahead.
“I only started beekeeping two months prior to moving to Glenasmole in 2012,” said Olly.
“I was always into food, used to spend holidays at my grandparent’s farm in Athlone as a kid. I’m a landscaper by trade, and still am, so very much into horticulture and wouldn’t survive at an indoors job.
“We would have been happy with half an acre, but we managed to get 8.5 acres in Glenasmole, which is great and close to the city. We moved in on August 28, 2012 and bought two chickens on August 29, started building a vegetable garden and then got goats and cows.”
Olly’s Farm also produces grass-fed rare Dexter beef, but the business model is led by the beekeeping expansion.
Hives are located at the farm in Glenasmole and at up to eight different locations across South Dublin and Wicklow, which results in the creation of raw honey made from many different flavours.
They even have four hives located on top of the Teeling Whiskey Distillery building in Dublin 8.
“The worst thing is driving, I spend more time doing that than I do at beekeeping,” quipped Olly.
“The feedback we get is incredible – it has helped some of our customers with allergies. We hope to double our hives in another six years. I’m not doing anything to the honey – it goes straight from the hive to the jar. One of the judges from Great Taste said they could taste the beeswax from the honey.
“Where we plant the hives, from Powersourt to Ballycullen to Lucan, the bees look for a source of nectar. A lot of commercial honey is pasteurised and loses enzymes. Ours is raw honey and it’s almost alive. Honey wants to crystalise, so if you bought honey and it isn’t starting to go hard after a year, you have to question it.”
Olly’s enthusiasm for the art of beekeeping and nature in general is infectious, but the one thing slowing him down is the Irish climate.
“It is a massive market but we are prevented from producing as much as we would want because the seasons are shorter here. Our average yield is 50 kilos a year, whereas in France, they can produce 150 kilos per year.”
Hence the drive for more bee colonies under Olly’s wing, who plans to make two part-time staff fulltime, with the farm currently in the process of building a honey house in Glenasmole for all processing works.
“We produce seven different types of honey at the moment, but when the summer harvest is produced in a couple of weeks, this will rise to 14. Ideally we will have 15 hives at each location to make it worthwhile.”
With each hive hosting up to three thousand bees and one queen, Olly’s Farm has a potential army of workers to keep business buzzing for many years to come.
