FACTORY 13

Certified organic beekeeping in Bassano Romano, in the Tuscia Viterbo area.

Raw honey, pollen, propolis and mead: everything that bees can do, respected to the fullest

A small company and a great people

Opificio 13 is a small, certified organic farm passionately dedicated to beekeeping. Small in size, immense in population: the true productive force of this enterprise are tens of thousands of bees, a hardworking population that emerges from their hives every day, explores the land, and returns laden with nectar, honeydew, pollen, and resin. The beekeepers' role here is not to command but to accompany: to follow the bees' biological cycle, to intervene as little as possible, to let nature dictate the timing. The rest—the honey in the jar—is the consequence of this respect.
 
 
 

The Tuscia that bees know

The bees of Opificio 13 live in the Tuscia region of Viterbo, in an extraordinarily rich landscape: forests of oak, holm oak, chestnut, beech, and conifer trees, uncultivated lands dotted with wildflowers, and areas populated by acacia and chestnut trees. The apiaries are located in various pristine areas, close to areas of high biodiversity and far from residential areas and major roads. This is no small detail: a bee forages within a radius of several kilometers, and the quality of what it brings back to the hive depends entirely on what it encounters out there. Choosing where to locate the hives is the first and most important production decision for a beekeeper.
 
 
 

Caring for bees without forcing them

No synthetic treatments are used in the apiaries: only essential oils and organic acids, as required by the organic beekeeping protocol. But the commitment goes beyond the specifications: there is careful and responsible management of the land surrounding the hives, designed to increase biodiversity—through the pollinator work of the bees themselves and through the daily choices of those who care for that land. A small portion of the hives are natural honeycomb, housed in horizontal top-bar hives: the bees build the honeycombs as they would in nature, without pre-printed wax sheets, following their geometry, not ours.
 
 

 
 

Raw honey, which tells the story of the vintage

Opificio 13 honey is artisanally processed and undergoes neither heat nor pasteurization: it remains a living food, with its enzymes, aromas, and properties intact. The company favors multiflower honeys because no other honey expresses the richness and uniqueness of a specific area so well: it expresses its aromas and flavors, and therefore has ever-changing characteristics depending on the season and its blooms. A multiflower honey is never the same twice—and for Opificio 13, this is not an imperfection to be corrected, but its greatest asset. Alongside nectar honeys, there are honeydew honeys, the sugary substance produced by aphids, scale insects, and honeybees from plant sap and recycled by bees, especially when nectar is scarce: less sweet, darker, and with a significantly higher mineral content.
 
 
 

Pollen and propolis, the lesser-known treasures of the hive

The hive produces much more than honey. Pollen is considered by many to be nature's most complete food: each grain is a biological unit containing everything necessary for life—about 20% protein in the form of amino acids, twenty-one of the twenty-three known, many of which are essential; sugars; essential fatty acids, with a clear prevalence of omega-3; minerals such as potassium, iron, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, and copper; and a large number of vitamins, especially B vitamins, as well as vitamins A, C, D, E, K, and PP. Being the raw material for royal jelly, it's no surprise that it's highly energetic and restorative. Propolis, on the other hand, is the mixture of resinous and balsamic substances that bees collect from buds, vegetative tips, and bark, enriching it with their own secretions to protect and disinfect the hive: over two hundred identified chemical compounds, including flavonoids, phenols, terpenoids, and vitamins, with antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties.
 
 

 
 

The mead, and the red with aronia

Then comes the most ambitious chapter: mead. Opificio 13 produces still, sparkling, ancestral, and red mead with aronia—four interpretations of the world's oldest fermented beverage, approached with technical expertise and genuine experimental curiosity. The still, sparkling, and ancestral meads play on varying degrees of effervescence and fermentation methods; the red mead, on the other hand, is born from the combination of honey and aronia juice, the dark berry of the black rowan tree, which lends a ruby ​​color, silky tannins, and a hint of berries that balances the floral sweetness. Making mead in Italy today means treading on almost uncharted ground, where the rules are written gradually: here, it's done with the same spirit as opening a beehive, knowing that the outcome always depends somewhat on nature.
 
 
 

The value of a jar

Behind every jar of Opificio 13 honey lies a carefully selected territory, an organic protocol adhered to without shortcuts, bees cared for with essential oils rather than chemicals, freely constructed honeycombs, and a process that forgoes heat to preserve the bees' original work. It must also be said that the silent work of pollination that those same bees perform throughout the surrounding area is the most valuable and least paid ecological service in the world. On Al Passo Food, you can discover all of Opificio 13's products. Opificio 13: honey, beehive products and meads from the Viterbo Tuscia area.
 
 
 

Follow us on Instagram for lots of news: @alpassofood

We answer all your questions about WhatsApp