I don’t want to bury the lead after a click-bait-y title like that. I’m talking about a bee hotel (pictured in the featured image so that you have an idea of what they look like).
It being World Honey Bee Day (August 16th), I thought I would use this occasion to write a bit about bee hotels and the critical importance of these little creatures. Yes, of course, from all this there are some ways that hotels can get in the climate-positive action with a potential ROI for the brand.
And as an FYI, I haven’t written or posted about my own green thumb predilection or the work I’ve done for hotels to advise on sustainability programs. More to follow, but for now, I’m hoping that a bee hotel is something every hotelier can add to their sylla-buzz.
Generalists Versus Specialists
The first shocker to start with is that the picture in your head of the family of species we call ‘bees’ is probably limited to the European Honey Bee, or maybe also the fuzzy Bumblebees, which are ‘eusocial’ species that create colonies and hives with hierarchal roles centered around the queen. There are, however, over 20,000 species of bees that have been discovered, and some of these lesser-known, more niche ones need your help.
European honey bees are eusocial (forming colonies), to our collective benefit in that they can be put to work in apiaries to make honey that we can extract from their hives. They are also ‘generalists’ in that they aren’t picky pollinators; they can bounce from flower to flower and don’t discriminate.
Numerous other bee species are not eusocial; they are mostly solitary, living their lives by themselves or with one other mate (and not making very much honey at all for us to harvest). They are also ‘specialist’ pollinators in that they are likely discerning for what plants and flowers they choose to mine for nectar and pollen. As an example, take a guess at what plant the ‘southeastern blueberry bee’ prefers for its diet.
This difference between generalist and specialist has profound implications for the plant species biodiversity of a given terrain, to the potential detriment of total plant mass (total terrestrial carbon sink) and environmental resilience.
Because generalist honey bees are often not endemic to a region and are brought as an invasive species in to pollinate a given crop, they will amplify the existing plant biodiversity that’s already there, as well as potentially outcompete some of the indigenous solitary bee species. If the ecosystem is imbalanced due to human activity over the years, then honey bees may only accelerate that imbalance, despite their inherently vital role in pollination.
On the contrary, because of their specialized nature, solitary bee species are more often harmonized to select plant species within their given habitats. When these native plant species are reduced in number, the adapted bee species likewise diminish in population. Over time, the result is a loss of natural environments (some may even call this terraforming) and lower overall biodiversity.
Enter the Bee Hotel
In the human world, it’s said that it takes a village to raise a baby. In the eusocial honey bee world, it takes an entire colony to make a hive. Solitary bee species don’t have that luxury; they are burrowers, carving their homes out of the nooks and crannies afforded to them by the chaotic erosion within any forest or grassland around the world.
Except terraformed, human-altered environments often don’t have enough rooms for rent to incentivize solitary bees to take up residence. Thus, they need a bit of help. They need something like a bee hotel: a structure the size of an extra-large birdfeeder with plenty of hollowed-out logs and other woody tubes where these little guys like to live.
The picture above is from my aunt’s farm about an hour outside of Ottawa. I gave her two bee hotels as a gift last year, available on Amazon for about $100 CDN each. Installing them this past spring (i.e. securing them against a tree so they won’t get knocked over in a storm), as you can see there’s already been some extended stay reservations. Pace is looking good!
For your own backyard or if you happen to be on the ops team for a resort, bee hotels strategically placed around the premises are a relatively low-cost way to do your part for sustainability. By supporting indigenous bee species, the second-order effect is that you’re supporting native plant species, helping turbocharge onsite horticulture or rewilding programs.
Also, they look cool. It’s good storytelling for guests, and storytelling is what helps you generate ADR uplift as well as better brand NPS. Especially today when so many of us are ‘voting with our wallets’ for more eco-conscious travel, setting up a few bee hotels can be a great way to ‘be seen going green’.
A Honey Bar for the Honey Fanatic
Now an interlude for a bit about me. Some people have wine cellars or whiskey collections. Wherever I travel, I pick up a bottle or two of honey, looking for the rarest, most esoteric or mono-floral varietals that I can find. I’m a bit of a honey fanatic.
Over the years, I’ve gathered quite the collection, so much so that I carved out a honey bar on a shelf in my pantry as pictured above. Currently on tap are honeys from Andorra, Australia, Canada, Cuba, Ecuador, Georgia, Guatemala, Japan, New Zealand, Panama, Scotland, Spain, Wales and Zambia. If you were get a chance to try it, the Japanese cheery blossom honey (second from left, bottom shelf) is my absolute favorite with a delicate and silky floral flavor.
One of the beautiful things about honey is that by virtue of its high concentration of antioxidants and the way it’s biochemically structured (by the vibration of the bees’ wings no less), honey is highly antimicrobial, giving it a shelf-life of several millennia (despite what a label may be required by law to specify). Due to a sugar present in honey called trehalose (amongst innumerable other bioactive compounds), honey is also very different from syrups or refined sugar liquids like molasses and barbecue sauce insofar as how it spikes insulin. It’s agreeable on the bottle.
Besides manuka which has done a great job of marketing itself as nutritious – even codifying its varying strengths with a unique manuka factor (UMF) or methylglyoxal (MGO) label, the rule of thumb is the darker the honey the more antioxidants it has. Buckwheat honey is a go to for Canadians where it’s plentiful. In Europe, look to chestnut honey or blueberry / bilberry honeys. Another fun type of honey is ‘honeydew honey’. Rather than make the honey straight from the source after going tree to tree, honeydew honey is made by bees who siphon the sugar off of aphids who are sucking it out of a tree branch (a product of a product of a plant).
(I would also collect olive oil – and I indeed pick up a couple bottles whenever I visit a Mediterranean country – because it’s also amazingly medicinal, but unlike honey olive oil’s antioxidants start to fade after a few months of bottling.)
What’s the point in this aside? The world of honey is vast and ever-multifloral. Like wine or olive oil, regionality is a huge factor. Just as there are thousands of different types of flowering plants, so too are there thousands of different honeys, all with their own subtle differences in flavor. No doubt there are millions of other travelers who also relish in the nuances of this natural, healthy food, and hotels would be wise to consider this when designing a menu or stocking the gift shop aisles with local craft goods.
Rooftop Hives for the Win
Back to the point of the article, beyond bee hotels, another awesome program I’m seeing around the world is the placement of beehives on the roofs of urban hotels.
The one pictured above was from my most recent trip to The Balmoral, a Rocco Forte Hotel in Edinburgh where I was honored to be given access to the rooftop where the hotel has a functional apiary (the green-colored bins) in addition to probably the best views of the city.
As you can probably tell, this is a back-of-house area. Nor is production large enough for them to bottle their own honey jars for retail downstairs. Instead, the honey produced on the roof is used exclusively in the hotel’s signature fine dining restaurant Number One, thus helping make every dining occasion there even more special by letting patrons taste a type of honey they can’t experience anywhere else in the world. This is storytelling at its finest, and yet one more element to support the hotel’s positioning as the city’s luxury leader.
Being from Toronto, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also give a shoutout to the Fairmont Royal York which also has a rooftop apiary program, boasting over 300,000 insects calling the hotel their home. Many other Fairmont Hotels & Resorts have rooftop beehives and I’m sure you can namedrop several other brands where their sustainability programs include something for the honey bees.
Still, as I’ve tried to convey this article, supporting honey bees doesn’t necessarily mean a hotel is supporting all bee species, with the latter often just as important for the overall health of an ecosystem. If you can, consider choosing from both avenues: bee hotels for solitary bee species or apiaries for communal honey bees. Either path can help to tell a good story for your guests and help you beeswax poetic for your sustainability reporting.
Questions And Answers From This Article
Why are bee hotels important for biodiversity and sustainability?
Bee hotels provide safe nesting places for solitary bee species, which are often overlooked compared to honey bees. These specialist pollinators support native plants, helping ecosystems stay resilient and diverse. For hotels, adding bee hotels is a low-cost way to contribute to environmental stewardship while also creating a sustainability story that resonates with eco-conscious travelers.
How can hotels use bees and honey to enhance the guest experience?
Many hotels are incorporating rooftop beehives and offering guests a taste of hyper-local honey in their restaurants, bars, or gift shops. This creates a unique storytelling opportunity, tying the dining or brand experience to the surrounding environment in a way that’s authentic and memorable. Beyond the flavor, guests increasingly value eco-conscious practices, which can boost a hotel’s reputation and guest loyalty.
What’s the difference between generalist and specialist pollinators, and why does it matter?
Generalist pollinators like honey bees can feed from many types of flowers, which makes them useful for large-scale agriculture and honey production. Specialist pollinators, however, focus on certain native plants, making them essential for maintaining biodiversity and healthy ecosystems. Supporting both types of bees—through apiaries for honey bees and bee hotels for solitary species—ensures balance and long-term sustainability, which directly impacts agriculture, food systems, and even climate resilience.