A Beekeeper at the Fairmont Waterfront in Vancouver, BC.
At the Jumeirah Frankfurt in Germany, the hotel’s honey is used in everything from food to the spa. To educate guests, Juliette Schwartz, director of sales and marketing, explains that the hotel plays a video next to the honeycomb on the breakfast buffet describing the four beehives on the hotel’s roof. There, bees have access to a variety of plants and green spaces along the Main River or the nearby botanical garden. Guests can sip honey-infused cocktails at the bar—one of the most popular is called Honey Rider—or buy a jar to take home from the gift shop. The spa offers a Skyline Honey Treatment, a body scrub made of granulated fruit and the hotel’s honey. Even the hotel’s youngest guests can get involved: A honeybee mascot dubbed “Jumbee” teaches children about bees and honey.
“We have a strong focus on sustainability, and bees are very important for a balanced environment,” Schwartz says, noting the property’s 40,000 bees pollinate everything from nearby plants to the flowers on the hotel’s balconies. “The honey production is a nice benefit to the dusting of our skyline honeybees.”
A “Bee’s Knees” Cocktail. – InterContinental Hotels Group
Quite possibly the most innovative bee-related offering is Bee Hut Therapy, available to guests at Savannah’s Perry Lane Hotel. The boutique property partners with the local Savannah Bee Company, a 17-year-old honey and mead purveyor known for its tupelo honey. The bee hut is literally just that, an enclosed structure that sits atop bee hives. In this immersive experience, guests sit in the sauna-like space and breathe in heated, honey-infused fumes emitted from the hives. Not only is it calming and almost meditative, but the fumes are thought to help ease respiratory and skin issues as well as anxiety.
“The air is filled with microbe particles containing propolis, beeswax, royal jelly, and bee pollen, and that is what creates the magic,” explains Perry Lane Hotel’s general manager Pritpal Singh. “Feeling the vibration of the bees and thrum of the hives is very unique, transformative, and certainly memorable.”
Savannah honey bourbon from the Savannah Bee Company. – Perry Lane Hotel
Less adventurous guests may tour Savannah Bee Company’s headquarters as well as taste its products, all of which are unique to Savannah. “Guests are blown away by the entire experience,” Singh says of seeing the bee garden, packing facility, and tasting space. “To observe the synchronization and harmony of the bees as they work in the bee garden is awe-inspiring. We should all strive to live like the bees: symbiotically with nature and in a manner that contributes positively to the world.”
