
"The St. Ermin’s Hotel in London is a hotel with a secret life of bees, 200,000 of them. On the rooftop of the hotel, three hives of busy Buckfast bees work the many parks and open spaces of London SW1, including Buckingham Palace to produce the hotel’s own honey. The honey is used in a variety of dishes and is also for sale. Is this the only hotel with an apiarist?"
It seems that the St. Ermins is not the only city hotel to have bees. A reader contacted me to tell me about three other London hotels, the Chesterfield Mayfair, the Atheneum and the Lancaster hotel, that all have bee hives.
From further afield in Jersey City another reader, now GM for the Hyatt Regency, and who formerly worked in the St. Ermins, emailed to say his hotel has hives too. He also sent me this link to a TED talk by Maria Spivak on the importance of keeping bees, http://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing.html?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2013-09-17
A quick flick around the internet and I came across other examples of hotels with bee hives including the Intercontinental Times Square, New York. Though how the bees make their way through the neon jungle will be a mystery. The W Hotel in Austin, Texas and the Seaport in Boston are a-buzzing.
Fairmont Hotels, have made a big commitment to bee-keeping and have hives on more than a dozen properties in the United States with more spreading around their global network, see the list here,
http://www.fairmont.com/promotions/fairmontbees/