Once in a lifetime, you stumble upon magic—an experience like no other. A moment in time where a flower flourished and a bee worked her entire life to create a flavor so rare that it can never be replicated the same way again. Honey is rare and fragile; a bee produces only 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime. Every drop of honey has its own unique sensory characteristics determined by its terroir—the botanical source, soil, climate, and terrain. There are thousands of flowers from which bees collect nectar to make honey, and no two will ever look, smell, or taste the same.

 

As the visionary behind the beloved brand Red Bee Honey, Marina continues to change the way people think and consume honey. One sunny day in April, Marina was invited to visit a neighbor’s apiary where her first taste of fresh honey from the beehive would change the course of her life. She quit her job, built a beehive and got her first colony of Italian honeybees to become an accidental beekeeper. Marina began selling her honey at local farmers markets. It was when a celebrity chef ordered honeycomb for his restaurant in NYC and Williams Sonoma order 200 honey tasting gift boxes then asked her to design soap, lip balm and candle DIY kits, the Red Bee brand was born.

 

Then on a trip to Tuscany to study wine tasting that Marina stumbled upon a honey festival in Montalcino (coincidentally called La Citta del Miele - The City of Honey) where she experienced her first honey tasting of 18 different varietals honeys. There she became passionate about the diverse flavor profiles of varietal honey determined by the type of nectar gathered by the honeybees. Marina was invited to take  the first honey sensory course in Sardinia. She returned to Bologna two more times to complete her formal training to become the first US citizen to be accepted as a member of the Italian National Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey. In 2013, with the guidance of the Italian Register she founded the American Honey Tasting Society to bring their honey educational program to the US. Today, Marina is an accredited instructor for The Register.