IRELAND’S OLDEST DRINK
REIMAGINED FOR TODAY

We’re a beekeeper-led organisation committed to conservation because, simply put, without bees, we have no mead.

Ireland has its own native honey bee — Apis mellifera mellifera, the native dark bee — a strain found nowhere else in Europe in its pure form. It’s under pressure from a number of sources, including imported bee strains and habitat loss, and is designated as an endangered species.

Through the Inishturk Native Irish Honey Bee Sanctuary, we’re working to conserve it. Inishturk is a small island roughly 15km off Ireland’s west coast, in the Atlantic — its isolation is exactly what makes it so valuable: a natural barrier that protects a genetically pure population from cross-breeding with imported strains, while supporting the bee’s future across Irish beekeeping more widely.

This isn’t a side project. It’s the reason the honey tastes the way it does, and the reason the mead has a story worth telling at all.

This isn’t a drinks brand that happened to find a good story. The story — the bees, the land, the history — came first. The mead is what we’re making of it.