http://waldorfastoria3.hilton.com/rs/magazine/issue1/buzz-worthy/
The Waldorf Astoria hotel has a project to help bees from extincting. I am surprise and amaze of what I found out. On the roof of they have six bee hives. The idea started with David Garcelon, director of culinary for Waldorf Astoria New York, who believes in local produce and now he has the freshest honey made for his restaurant. While interning I learned that this project is supportive to the environment and the hotel property operations do need to make sure the regulations is met for these projects.
Sounds like a win-win situation for both the hotel and the environment. Curious if any of the bees ever ended up in the guests’ hotel rooms.
This was an interesting read. I must admit this is such a clever idea to bring fresh local ingredients to Waldorf from its roof. I wonder if the customers dining in at Waldorf know about this wonderful project they are doing. But at the same time, bees often scare me and it might be a bit scary if anything happens and the bees were let out.
I agree with both of you Moemu and Sally. I am also curious about how they control the bees from getting loose. I will try to find more about it and it would be great if I can meet the beekeeper Andrew Cote to learn more.
This is awesome! It’s a win-win situation. It promote bee extinction and the restaurant can offer guests local honey. I hope you can get a little behind the scenes and sample the honey.
Talk about local honey! I have first heard about this sometime ago. I think they had a special about it on TV, or maybe they were selling the honey in the farmers market in union square. I can’t remember. It’s such a great way to utilize a rooftop space, and the benefits are endless. A small step towards making the city more green and also helping the bee population and assisting with pollination. Bees are a necessity to our plant ecosystem and not many people are aware of that. It would be a great experience to visit the beehive and see first hand how they harvest the honey.
Prof. Stewart is a bee keeper. Contact her for information.
Did you know Chef Garcelon and Prof. Garcelon are married? If you work together again make sure to let him know you are from City Tech.
Bees are definitely important to our ecosystem and I was so excited to finally go up to the roof to see the bees. They had some unique names for the hives such as “Grand Bee Room” which I think is a symbol of the Grand Ball Room of the hotel, “Empire Hive of Mine,” “It’s Hive O’clock Somewhere,” and the “Royal Hive.”
I did have a chance to see Chef Garcelon on my orientation, when I do see him again I’ll be sure to introduce myself again.
That is quite an interesting aspect of New York that I didn’t know about. Especially with the fact that I often pass by Waldorf Astoria when running various errands. I have known about rooftop gardens and the fact that New York has the biggest one in the Northern Hemisphere( if I remember correctly) located on Javits Centre. My grandfather, actually both of them were beekeepers. Both used to make very sweet honey beer and wine. A 160z glass was enough to make most drinkers excited for several hours. To the best of my knowledge it was a very good alcoholic drink because it was also herbal. The other aspect being that there were no hangovers.
This article has elicited some sweet as honey sweet memories.