Homestead Ventures · Project Concept · Sicily
The groves need bees. The cream needs wax. The table needs honey that still tastes like Sicily.
The same homesteads we reclaim for Linea Special already flower — cover crops under the olives, wild thyme on the limestone, citrus where the land drops toward the sea. That is forage. We put hives in those groves, keep the native Sicilian black bee where we can, and pull raw honey, wax, and propolis from the same system that already makes oil and will make donkey-milk cream.
The Raise
Homestead Ventures is actively raising capital to launch the Sicilian Grove Honey line as a real, profitable business — not a preview and not a donation drive. Founding partners come in now, at seed terms, before the first jar ships to a U.S. pantry.
Where we start
The first hives sit on already-reclaimed Sicilian land — the same property that grows Linea Special. No capital goes to land acquisition on day one. Your capital funds the hives, the boxes, the extraction gear, and the first honey line.
Where we grow
As the honey subscription proves out, we lease or acquire more reclaimed properties — more forage, more blooms, more hives on the same standard. This is where the compounding happens.
Who we need
A limited founding cohort. Founders come in first, at seed terms, and are named on the harvest list. Standard partners come in as the round fills. Equity, not donation.
Interested? Reach out and we’ll walk you through the numbers, the timeline, and the specific terms for the slot you want.
Inquire About the Round →Why Sicily, Why These Groves
The main blooms that actually come off Sicilian apiaries — each one a different jar, a different month, a different piece of the year.
Honey is not a side hobby. It is the third cash crop in the same reclaim model: oil from the trees, milk from the herd, honey from the hives. Wax from those hives goes into the donkey-milk face cream and into any olive-oil soap we make. Nothing is ornamental. Everything feeds the next product.
Summer · Presidium
Timo Ibleo
Wild thyme (Thymus capitatus, “satra”). Amber, herbal, from the Hyblaean Mountains. Slow Food Presidium.
Spring · April–May
Zagara
Citrus blossom. Light, floral, delicate. From orchards where the land drops toward the sea.
Late summer
Eucalyptus
Darker, balsamic. A different mouth than the spring jars.
Mountain
Chestnut
Dark, bitter-sweet. From the mountain reaches when the trees are in bloom.
Spring · forage
Sulla
Mild table honey. The forage crop that keeps the hives strong.
Rolling · mixed
Millefiori
The mixed Mediterranean bloom. Flavor changes with the month — that’s the point.
Late · southeast
Carob
Late-season, darker. From the carob groves of southeastern Sicily.
The rule
One bloom.
Every jar labeled by flower, place, and harvest date. Raw. Unheated past what the hive already did.
There is no Miele di Sicilia IGP to lean on the way Sicilia PGI works for oil. Honesty is the label: origin is the grove and the bloom, not a fake DOP.
EU honey rules now require country of origin on the jar — ours will say Italy / Sicily, the bloom, and the harvest date. Raw. Unheated past what the hive already did.
Olive trees themselves are mostly wind-pollinated. That is fine. The bees are not there to “make the olives set.” They are there because a biodynamic grove with living cover is a forage field, and because bees are the farm’s health meter. Spray the grove and the hives tell you. Leave the understory and the hives pay you.
The Bee We Want
The Sicilian black bee. Island subspecies. Nearly replaced by imports. Still being brought back.
Apis mellifera sicula — the Sicilian black bee. Dark abdomen, heat-tolerant past 40 °C when other bees shut down, relatively docile, lower winter stores, good on dry central-Sicily forage. It was nearly replaced by imported Ligustica through the twentieth century. Recovery work is real and unfinished — most of what is left sits in the west, around Trapani, Palermo, and Agrigento.
Where genetics and isolation allow it, this project keeps sicula. Where it does not, we still keep bees pesticide-free on reclaimed groves. We are not going to claim every hive is pure sicula until that is verified.
What we do claim is the intent: native bee, no prophylactic chemicals in the grove, no industrial blend honey.
How the Three Ventures Lock
Groves, herd, and hives on the same land. Every product feeds the next.
The homestead is not a monoculture. The three ventures interlock at the physical level — not marketing, not story, but materials. Wax from the hives becomes the hard phase in the donkey-milk cream. Olive oil plus wax becomes soap. Honey itself is the grocery SKU that ships in the same box as the oil subscription.
Wax is the hinge. A face cream needs a hard phase. Soap needs a superfatting story and a bar that holds. Olive oil plus wax plus a drop of honey is a real formula, not a mood board. Honey itself is the grocery SKU — jars, gifts, U.S. subscription next to the oil.
The Math · Why Fifty Hives
Italian cost studies land stationary hives around 12 kg of honey a year. Migratory hives push closer to 22 kg. Sicily swings hard with drought and bloom — we plan conservative.
Phase 1 · 20 hives
~240 kg / year
Stationary, on the reclaimed grove. First harvest bottled as limited jars. Wax reserved for the first cream and soap batches.
Operating goal · 50 hives
~600 kg / year
Stationary baseline at 50 hives. Real pantry line — roughly 2,400 jars at 250 g. Small enough to stay on the homestead, big enough to be a business.
With nomadism · good year
900–1,100 kg
If some hives move with the bloom toward ~18–22 kg, 50 hives can approach four figures in a strong year. Bad years happen — we say so up front.
The Business Plan
Not a moonshot. A staged build where the groves are already flowering and the land is already ours.
Hives in the Groves
Place the first 20 colonies on a reclaimed homestead that already has mature olives — and, where possible, citrus or wild thyme in range. Learn the bloom calendar on that land.
First harvest bottled as limited jars. Wax reserved for the first donkey-cream and olive-soap batches. No supermarket honey. No blend from outside the island.
The Pantry & the Formula
Honey subscription to the U.S. alongside Linea Special: quarterly or harvest-dated jars (zagara in spring, millefiori or thyme when the land gives it).
Beeswax written into the cream and soap recipes as a named Sicilian input, not “cera alba from a drum.” Founding pantry tier locks first-year pricing.
Fifty Hives, More Groves
As more scouted homesteads come online, the forage pool grows. Still small-batch. Still raw. Still labeled by bloom.
Revenue sits alongside oil and milk: three products, one reclaim thesis. Optional later lines — propolis, pollen, queen-rearing of sicula if the genetics program is real.
Wellness · Say Only What Holds
We are not selling a cure. We are selling a honest jar of a specific Sicilian bloom.
Raw Sicilian honey is a dense, unrefined carbohydrate with enzymes, pollen, and flavor the supermarket blend does not have. Traditional uses: throat, winter tea, a spoon in the morning. That is enough of a story.
Beeswax in cream: occlusive, helps the bar and the jar hold. A historical cosmetic ingredient. That is enough.
If we mention antioxidants or antimicrobial character, we keep it one sentence and point to honey as a class of food, not this honey as a drug.
Founding Partners
Same frame as the donkey project and Linea Special. Early supporters are not buying a painted box. They are in before Sicilian grove honey is a U.S. pantry item.
Fund the first 20 colonies.
Your capital covers the first colonies, boxes, and year-one feed and vet care. Where the numbers land is confirmed in the round terms. First harvest arrives when the jars do.
Tied to a season. A named bloom.
Your name goes on a specific bloom — zagara, thyme, millefiori. Every year that bloom is harvested, you get an allocation of that specific honey. Continuity across harvests. Named on the harvest list.
Fund the subscription launch.
Hives and honey are proven. Your capital funds the jar, label, and shipping pipeline that gets Sicilian honey into pantries on a quarterly cadence — and the wax pipeline that feeds the cream and soap lines.
If Founding Partner Is Not the Fit
Not everyone we talk to is positioned for a founding-partner slot — and that’s fine. If you want to see this honey come to life and hold the first jar when it ships, there’s a way in at every level.
$50
A simple way to be part of it — and to hear from Sicily every month.
$150
The tier where you actually hold the product — the first jar of the harvest, single-bloom, harvest-dated.
$500
The full backing tier — and an open door to visit the grove yourself.
Every supporter, at every level, helps put bees in the grove. A small jar still counts as a launch.
The Family of Ventures
This is the third venture on the same Sicilian property. Wax goes into the cream. Groves are the forage. One inquiry form. Three real products.
Venture 01 · Grove to door
Biodynamic Sicilian olive oil from mature groves on scouted homesteads. Single grove, single cultivar, single harvest date. No blending.
See the Project →Venture 02 · Conservation + product
A registered sanctuary herd of Ragusano donkeys on our Sicilian land — conservation with a real business behind it: milk, cream, freeze-dried powder.
See the Project →Fair Questions
Olive trees are mostly wind-pollinated — the bees are not there to make the olives set. They are there because a biodynamic grove with living cover is a forage field, and because bees are the farm’s health meter. Spray the grove and the hives tell you. Leave the understory and the hives pay you.
Apis mellifera sicula is the Sicilian black bee — an island subspecies, heat-tolerant, docile, adapted to dry central-Sicily forage. It was nearly replaced by imported Ligustica. Recovery work is real and unfinished. Where genetics and isolation allow it, we keep sicula. Where they do not, we still keep bees pesticide-free on reclaimed groves.
Same reason as 20 donkeys and one grove at a time. Enough to be a real business. Small enough to stay on the homestead. Fifty hives at conservative Italian yields is roughly 600 kg a year — a real pantry line, not a souvenir stall.
Bad years happen. Sicilian thyme has already dropped from about 6 kg per hive in good years toward about 2 kg. We tell subscribers up front — same honesty as the olive trees alternate-bearing. A short year is not a broken promise.
A face cream needs a hard phase — that’s beeswax. Our wax comes from our own hives, on our own groves. It goes into the donkey-milk cream as a named Sicilian input, not cera alba from a drum. Same for olive-oil soap.
Ours is raw — unheated past what the hive already did. That preserves enzymes, pollen, and the actual flavor of the bloom. Supermarket honey is often flash-heated and micro-filtered to look clear; that also strips character. The label will say raw. We mean it.
Italy / Sicily, the bloom (zagara, thyme, millefiori), and the harvest date. EU rules now require country of origin. We add the grove and the year. No fake DOP. No “Miele di Sicilia IGP” because that doesn’t exist. When the apiary is inside the Hyblaean zone for thyme, we’ll say Slow Food Presidium — because that one is real.
Put hives in a grove we already have to reclaim. Stock a pantry in the States. Let the wax disappear into the cream.
This page is a project concept and capital raise. Yields, timelines, and bloom availability are working targets, not promises. Actual apiary numbers will be verified before any subscription pricing is set. Honey is food; cream and soap are cosmetics — U.S. import, labeling, and FDA rules will be handled separately before the first paid shipment.