Adopt-a-Hive box set: an ethical and tasty experience

What we often forget is that honey is a real food, which prevents us from getting to know it fully in all its nuances and characteristics. This is why we thought of creating BeeBox "Adopt a beehive", an ethical and sustainable tasting experience! In fact, honey, like wine and oil, can be tasted: there is a real sensory analysis that guides us in a deeper investigation of this product. One can thus grasp all the peculiarities and distinctive traits of each type of honey. Very often we use honey in cooking, as any ingredient in one of the many recipes we decide to experiment with. Other times we use it to sweeten a herbal tea, using it instead of sugar. But this foodstuff is so precious and rich in beneficial properties, that it has been used since ancient times, even in facial and body care.

BeeBox is a taste experience of 3 different types of honey, selected by us to give you a little more insight into the incredible product of the bees' hard work. You will in fact have a multi-flower honey and two monofloral honeys, one with a more bitter and intense taste, chestnut, and one sweeter and more delicate, rhododendron. These honeys not only have different botanical origins, but also different textures and characteristics. The chestnut is an intensely dark-coloured honey, rich in antioxidants. It has a strong odour and aroma, while on the palate it is not very sweet, incisive and rather bitter. It has a liquid consistency and hardly crystallises. The rododendron is a more difficult honey to produce because it is only made in the mountains, at high altitudes, where conditions are often not favourable for honey production. It is very light in colour, with a faint, fruity odour and aroma. It is a rather sweet honey that tends to crystallise into crystals

With BeeBox you will get a more faithful insight into what the bees produce during the summer and be able to taste the differences between one honey and another. In this, you will also be followed by an expert taster, who will guide you step by step through the sensory analysis of the 3 types. From colour analysis, to odour analysis and ending with tasting, you will learn the basic concepts of sensory analysis and appreciate all the facets of this much-used, but so little-known product. But BeeBox not only allows you to approach honey more consciously, but also to support an Italian beekeeping reality and its bees.

The honey will be sent directly to you by beekeeper Paulin, of PolyAgriNova beekeeping, located in the Asti area. Paulin Takumbo Takam, known as Tak, is a beekeeper of Cameroonian origin who arrived in Italy in 2008 to attend the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at the University of Turin. Paulin has always cultivated a great curiosity for the world of bees: even as a child, he watched his father manage the hives he kept behind the house and was fascinated by them. When, during his studies, he took a course focusing on these incredible and very important insects, he decided that he would make it his job.

This is how he opened his beekeeping company, the PolyAgriNova, in 2014, after completing a bachelor's and a master's degree. Right from the start, he adhered to the organic specification. In order to receive this certification, the beekeeper must respect certain dictates, including the exclusive use of certified organic wax and no synthetic products in the care of the hive. Furthermore, bees must only be fed with certified organic syrup and candy, and no clipping of queens' wings must be performed. Finally, apiaries must be installed in locations far from sources of pollution. Paulin now manages around 300 hives, including families in production and nuclei. He currently produces 8 honeys and many of them have won numerous prizes in various competitions.

BeeBox is part of the "Adopt a hive" project. By choosing this taste experience, you can adopt one of the hives that Paulin monitors with our 3Bee systems. In this way, you can remotely follow the development and growth of the hive and delve even deeper into the incredible world of bees. With the 'Adopt a Beehive' project, you make a concrete contribution to the preservation of these insects, whose survival is threatened by pesticides, climate change, pests, diseases and depletion of natural habitats. In one year, you can protect up to 60,000 bees by supporting the beekeeper who looks after them. In this way, you will also be helping the environment and our planet. 70% of food crops and more than 90% of wild plants depend directly on the pollination activity of these insects. In one year, 60,000 bees can pollinate more than 2.5 million flowers.