Chicago Marriott Naperville “Honey Bees”

Spring is in the air, which means our honeybees are getting ready to go to work!

We’ve been hosting hundreds of honeybees all winter long in our 4 beehives on the hotel rooftop, and now they are able to start mating and producing their sweet nectar for us to serve in our Artisan Table restaurant. Our Signature Honey House Wedding Cake, lemonade, various pastries and desserts are all items that use this delicious ingredient.

Our Executive Chef Sean Curry has taken this hyper-local food sourcing initiative very seriously, and before he starts extracting the honey from the hives, he has to check to make sure that none of the bees have developed any diseases over the winter.

After that, Chef Curry checks how many eggs the Queen has laid, which allows for him to build the proper size nest. This can be a tricky task, because if the nest is too small and the bees swarm, a new Queen bee emerges (for a total of two) and the colony is split in half. If the nest is too large, the bees are not efficient and will often make wax instead of honey. Therefore, one of the most important jobs in the next few weeks will be to learn how many eggs the Queen has laid, and figure out just how large to make the new nest.

This amazing occurrence all happens after the Queen bee has made a trip to the drone yard, where all of the male bees are kept to mate. Mating is the only job that male honeybees are used for. Once the Queen leaves the drone field, she comes back and lays thousands of eggs!

Chef Curry’s final task in this phase is to ensure that the bees have a food and vitamin source until the flowers have fully bloomed. Chef Curry supplements the bee’s food source with sugar water and Honey Bee Healthy. The sugar water helps tide the bees over until pollen is plentiful, and the Honey Bee Healthy acts like vitamins to keep them happy and healthy.

When all is said and done in preparing the bees to do their work, we sit back and wait for the magic to happen.

Now, we sit back and hope to see the flowers and pollen grow so we can start producing honey and serving up delicious treats in our Artisan Table Restaurant.

We’ll keep you updated here on our blog, so stay tuned with more from the honeybees!