Carla Marina Marchese is the designer turned beekeepers and the visionary behind the beloved brand Red Bee 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 a full – time beekeeper. It was on a trip to Tuscany to study wine tasting that Marina attended a honey festival in Montalcino (coincidentally called La Citta del Miele - The City of Honey) where she stumbled upon Italy's honey sommelier program.

 

Today, Carla Marina is the founder of the American Honey Tasting Society and an accredited instructor for the Italian Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey. She is the author The World Atlas of Honey, The Honey Connoisseur, Honey for Dummies and Honeybee Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper.

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In 2024, she was recognized with a WISE WOMAN award for her contributions to the Italian American community by The National Organization of Italian American Women. She is a graduate of The School of Visual Arts in NYC.

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Jason Wilson at The Washington Post writes "Which is to say Marchese's palate is so finely tuned that she can literally taste the beekeeper's fear in

a smear of honey."

​Carla Marina's web site is honeysommelier.com​

Marchese has appeared on numerous TV shows - Dr. Oz, ABC's The Chew, ViceTV - The Untitled Action Bronson Show, On the Road with Edible Nutmeg and PBS Weekends with Yankee with Emmy award winner Richard Wiese. Most recently The Discovery Channels Moonshiner's. James Beard award winning author Rowan Jacobsen dubbed Marina the “Red Queen” owing to her obsession with varietal honey in his book, American Terroir.