Thursday, May 12, 6:00 PM. Columbus Citizens Foundation - 8 East 69th Street, New York, NY 10021. RSVP here. Please note, due to the nature of this event, space is limited. Book now to ensure your attendance. Join us on for a sweet evening with C. Marina Marchese, beekeeper, author, and American’s only honey expert trained in Italy. Marina will demystify the secret world of bees and how they produce honey.

We’ll take a delicious tour of single-origin Italian honeys, their botanical sources, the regions they were produced with a lively discussion about their flavors. C. Marina Marchese is changing the way people think about honey, this designer turned beekeeper is best known as the visionary behind the beloved brand Red Bee Honey.

It was a sunny April day when 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 a full–time beekeeper.

It was on a trip to Tuscany to study wine tasting that Marina stumbled upon a honey festival in Montalcino (coincidentally called La Città del Miele) that inspired her to launch the Red Bee Brand. Marchese returned to Italy three more times to complete her formal training and 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.

A graduate of The School of Visual Arts, Marina’s Red Bee brand has been recognized for its innovative design and has earned the coveted Slow Food Snail of Approval. She has appeared on numerous TV shows like The Chew, PBS Weekends with Yankees, and Dr. Oz.