To bee or not to bee? That was the question facing Myk Banas as he pondered how to turn the roof of the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile into a literal beehive of activity. The roof, despite being used for growing herbs and vegetables, was still underutilized and ready to be capitalized.

CHAPTER 1
Banas, the property’s executive chef and director of F&B operations, prefers to make his comestibles from scratch. The pasta is from scratch. The pastries are from scratch. The sausage—natch—is from scratch. The only items not made from scratch at the property are dinner rolls, hamburger buns, and sliced bread. So it doesn’t take a giant leap to digest why the hotel decided to make its own honey.

Marriott F&B veteran Banas hatched the idea of onsite honey-making with the advice of Greg Fischer, a local winemaker and beekeeper whose Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery is a Marriott vendor. Banas did his research, checking out the hives on the green roof of Chicago’s Richard J. Daley Center and listening to Fischer wax on about his favorite insect.

CHAPTER 2
His mind fully pollinated, Banas went back to his hotel and started investigating in depth. First, he looked into getting an official city license for beekeeping. Apparently, no such document existed. Next was the question of management buy-in. The higher-ups were sweet on the idea, so it became a matter of finding the right bee for the task. Fischer suggested that Italian five-striped honeybees would be ideal, due to their relative docility and high productivity.

CHAPTER 3
In the spring of 2009, worker bees were imported from California and Florida, while the queens came from Hawaii. Their Chicago rooftop hive co-op started with 15,000 occupants, and the busy bees multiplied quickly. By the end of the summer, the bee population was up to 200,000.

Fischer believes the Marriott rooftop is a perfect place to house bees, given all of the nectar available up and down Michigan Avenue. Because of the city’s planned planting, “the bees have a long, sustained nectar flow that keeps the hives thriving for months,” he explains.

The staff nurtured the bees throughout the summer to produce about 200 pounds of honey. Labor to obtain the honey is not extensive; staffers in protective suits reach into the hives and take out the removable frames into which the bees build honeycombs. The frames are placed into a honey-extracting centrifuge, which Banas says costs around $600. It spins the honey out into a pot that Winnie the Pooh would covet.

The price for the entire rooftop beehive setup was $2,500, including the extracting equipment ($500-$600), insulated hives (it is Chicago, after all), bee suits for the staff, and, of course, the bees.

What does the hotel do with a tenth of a ton of honey? Last year, Banas brewed 22 kegs worth of Rooftop Honey Wheat Beer (brewed by Half Acre Beer Company, a Chicago brewery, and sold at $4 a pint from honeycomb-design pull taps in the lobby bar) as well as house-label wine. He adds the sweet stuff to pastry and bread dough and features it on the breakfast buffet. The honey is also sold straight, in jars with the hotel’s label. In addition to the food and beverage benefits, the homemade honey provides the hotel with a great deal of local buzz.

Honey-touched fare is more of a calling card than a profit center at the hotel; Banas sells the beer for less than other artisanal brews, which go between $5 and $6.

Laura Powell has covered the travel industry for nearly 20 years. She appears on television stations across the country as a travel expert and blogs at www.dailysuitcase.com.

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