The Bees of the Volcano

At 1,880 meters on Mount Etna where the road ends, bees gather the precious nectar of astragalus to pollinate endemic plants. This small alpine flora flowers briefly each June, only at this altitude, on Europe's highest active volcano. This is the world Daniela and Marco have built in a UNESCO-listed forest zone: a mobile sustainable wooden house on wheels, designed to move with the bees through the seasons and leave no trace on the landscape. In summer, the house climbs to where the astragalus blooms. You travel with them through forest across ancient lava flows to reach it. The hives are connected to the outside through small mesh windows that let you observe the colony from inches away — without wearing beekeeping suits. You watch the bees work and taste honey straight from the honeycomb. Then, a tasting of honeys paired with fresh fruit and Sicilian cheeses, with the Etna landscape through the windows, the hum of the bees and the scent of wood and honey filling the wooden house.

Astragalus honey is one of the rarest in the Mediterranean. Daniela and Marco bring their hives to the upper edge of the beech and birch forest, just below the volcanic desert to catch the flowering. The honey is delicate, with a flavor that exists nowhere else. What makes their project distinctive is the sustainable mobile fir-wood house on wheels, designed to move with the bees. This lets guests come close to the colony without protective suits — a system built around the native Sicilian black bee (Apis mellifera siciliana), a Slow Food Presidium variety known for its calm temperament. Daniela and Marco grew up on Etna and are young beekeepers with experience rooted in a local tradition they have chosen to continue through a more sustainable practice. The threat behind it is climate change: astragalus, like many alpine endemics, depends on conditions that are shifting fast. Tasting this honey is also tasting and supporting something that may not be possible to make for much longer.

Daniela and Marco are young beekeepers from Etna who built their project around a simple challenge: how to produce honey at the volcano's upper edge without leaving a mark on the landscape. The answer is a mobile fir-wood house on wheels that follows the bees through the seasons — and at the height of summer, climbs to 1,880 meters, said to be the highest altitude reached by working hives in Europe. Together, Daniela and Marco offer one of the most unusual beekeeping encounters in Europe — a working apiary on a UNESCO-listed volcano, built around a native bee and a flower that grows nowhere else. Daniela also trained in functional psychomotor therapy and educational anthrozoology — fields that study how children learn through relationships with animals and the natural world. She can adapt the experience for kids of all ages through role-play, activities and storytelling, with illustrated books that bring the colony's life into something a child can understand.

Wear comfortable closed-toe walking shoes. Bring layers; conditions at 1,880m are cooler than the coast, and the volcano's weather changes quickly. If you have any allergies to honey or bees, please notify Daniela and Marco at booking.