At twelve years of age Gelsomina runs her unconventional Italian family with her three younger sisters working under her watchful eye. Together they keep the bees and make the honey on their fathers farm oblivious to the world outside of their own. Whilst all around them the countryside is being burnt up by pesticides and rural life is falling apart, a TV show competition arrives from the city offering a cash prize and a luxury cruise for a family that can prove its the most traditionally Italian. Gelsomina wants to participate in the contest but her father is too consumed with the new farm laws and in getting his honey lab up to standard to consider his daughters dream. They work tirelessly to expand the bee colonies and even take on help – a delinquent German boy from a youth rehabilitation exchange program. But the tension mounts between her father and the boy and soon nothing will be the same for Gelsomina and her family.