Hotels are getting in on the beekeeping trend, to boost bee populations and make a little honey on the side
- In a trend started by the Fairmont chain, hotels around the world are installing beehives
- Urban hotel rooftops are buzzing with activity, and the honey features on their menus and in the gift shops
You may think penthouse suites are the highest accommodation to be found in a hotel, but some are creating residences on the rooftop – although not for human guests.
As bee populations decline, hoteliers around the world have been installing apiaries, in most cases on the roof. Since bees are crucial to biodiversity and pollinate a lot of the fruit and vegetables we eat, there’s good reason to ensure their welfare.
While helping the ecosystem, a delicious secondary benefit is the honey harvested from the hotels’ hives, which is found on restaurant and cocktail menus as well as in spa treatments and as gifts.
The Fairmont group led the way, introducing apiaries at its Canadian hotel in 2008. At one of these, the Waterfront in Vancouver, a “bee butler” conducts daily tours of the hives. The chain now has hives at 21 properties around the world, and last year began trialling cameras at five of these, including Yangcheng Lake Resort in Kunshan, Suzhou, Jiangsu province, to monitor the bees’ activity.
Hotel apiaries are not just based in bucolic locations, though. “It’s hard to find land in cities to put beehives, so hotel rooftops allow us to put them where there would otherwise be no bees to perform pollination,” says Doug Purdie, co-founder of The Urban Beehive, in Sydney, Australia, where he tends to several hotel apiaries.