The Honeycomb
There is no corporate entity behind the network. No licensing fee. No compliance audit. What connects the communities is a shared culture, a common membership system, and the people who have been shaped by Honeydew.
A global network of ECO-communities
Not an escape.
A beginning.
Honeydew is a place where ambitious people come to live, work, and build something that lasts. Communal life, grounded in ecology, open to the world.
As featured in
Our mission
Honeydew is a collaborative initiative to build a sustainable future, emphasising collective resilience and communal creativity.
We seek to blend the best of modernity with tradition: cosmopolitan in culture, local in nature. Our intergenerational communities provide a space for sharing, creativity, and mutual care.
2030
Honeydew 2030 · Vision & Action
Not an escape.
An alternative.
The crises converging around us - ecological, political, social - are not separate problems. They share a common root: the myth that we thrive alone.
Honeydew is a counter-proposal. Not a retreat from the world, but an argument about how to live in it. The alternative to consumerism is not austerity. It is abundance of a different kind: more meaning, more connection, more authenticity, more life.
"You cannot heal alone. You cannot even know yourself alone. We are a communal species - and we find meaning in relation to one another."Benjamin Ramm, Founder
By 2030, the goal is a global network of communities that prove the model works - financially, culturally, humanly. Not a utopia. Evidence.
Read the Honeydew visionDOCUMENTARY
The vision behind the plan
Documentary
Featuring Benjamin Ramm
The ecovillage network
"For he on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge · ‘Kubla Khan’The network
One culture of co-creation, rooted in many places.
19
Communities
6
Countries
3
Continents
🇮🇹 Italia
1 community
- Maiolo, Emilia-Romagna (HQ)
🇧🇷 Brasil
12 communities
- Itacimirim, Bahia
- Vale do Capão, Bahia
- Uruçuca, Bahia
- Santa Teresa, Espírito Santo
- Alto Paraíso, Goiás
- Vila Paraíso, Goiás
- Colinas do Sul, Goiás
- São Lourenço, Minas Gerais
- Paraty Mirim, Rio de Janeiro
- Teresópolis, Rio de Janeiro
- Piedade, São Paulo
- Juquitiba, São Paulo
🇮🇳 India
3 communities
- Do Gaon, Uttarakhand
- Nainital, Uttarakhand
- Waichin Valley, Himachal Pradesh
🌎 & beyond
Colombia · Portugal · Sri Lanka
- Subachoque, Cundinamarca, Colombia
- Soure, Coimbra, Portugal
- Midigama, Ahangama, Sri Lanka
How the network works
Not a franchise. A trust network.
Honeydew is not a single community in Italy. It is a growing network of ecological communities, held together not by a corporate structure but by a shared way of living, a shared membership, and people who carry the culture with them wherever they go.
01
Across the network
The Passport
How a person who spent three months at Maiolo can arrive at a community in Brazil or Sri Lanka and be recognised, not as a stranger who might be interesting, but as someone who has already proven something.
The Swarm
In nature, a swarm is how a hive that has become too full of life creates a new one. Every Passport holder is a potential swarm. The network grows because the culture is worth carrying.
02
Inside each community
Each new project becomes a node, governed locally and bound by a shared creed.
- Solidarity
- Simplicity
- Hospitality
- Ecological stewardship
- Non-violence
Communal abundance
Fresh food grown on site, clean air, pure water, and a star-filled night sky, shared in common, not consumed in isolation.
Collective resilience
A community that absorbs the shocks that isolate the individual: social, ecological, and personal.
Creativity in symphony
A cooperative model that harnesses the talents of all its members, exploring shared states of group flow rather than perpetual competition.
Benjamin Ramm · FounderIn his own words
The flower of community comes from the earth, and at Honeydew, we live a more active, grounded life, avoiding the online culture of silos and slogans. At the core of our outlook is gratitude: for fresh, abundant food; for a cosmopolitan community rooted in local traditions; for the dazzling, star-filled night sky; for clean air and pure water; for low noise and light pollution; for a space to co-create and reimagine our own kind of society.”
- Benjamin Ramm, Founder of Honeydew
What our volunteers are saying
Strangers arrive. A community leaves together.
★★★★★
Top Host on Worldpackers
“Deep social bonds, in service to a shared project, grounded in nature, and cosmopolitan in culture.”The Honeydew formula · as told to Worldpackers
Top Host
Recognised on Worldpackers for a transformative experience open to international travellers of all ages.
★★★★★ Worldpackers reviews
In their own words
Unfiltered reviews from volunteers who stayed with us - posted on our Worldpackers profile.
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Glimpses from the communities.
A community that arrives as strangers and leaves together 🍯
Are we dreaming? Glimpses of spring 🌸
The honey bee at the heart of a growing global network.
🇨🇴 La alquimia de la comunidad, a new community in Colombia.
We are an international and intergenerational group 🌍
Regeneração, what it means to live close to the land.
A perfect Saturday at Honeydew 🍷
The table is where it all begins.
Community life · A short film
A Taste of Community Life
FILM · 2024 A Taste of Community Life
Support the network
Help us grow the ecovillage network.
Every donation is pooled directly into the shared land, tools, and infrastructure that make communal life possible.
Solar installation, Maiolo - one of the shared infrastructure projects your donation helps fund.
€Other
donation€20
Every contribution helps cover the land, the tools, and the table.