You travel and stay in fancy hotels. So why can’t bees?
Oh right! They haven’t had a bee hotel to go to.
Now they can. A new bee hotel has opened atop Toronto’s Fairmont Royal York.
See that structure in the picture? It may look like an IKEA bookshelf, but it’s specifically-designed to attract bees.
There’s already buzzing going on at the Fairmont Royal York. Since 2008, the site has had an apiary which includes six hives.
The hives produce about 360 kilograms of honey each year which is served to customers at the hotel’s restaurants.
These wild bees that the bee hotel is designed for won’t produce honey but are crucial for the ecosystem around the city. Wild bees are better pollinators than their honeybee cousins.
But they are declining in numbers.
Alexandra Blum, one of the project’s founders behind the bee hotel, who works for the cosmetic company Burt’s Bees, said wild bees are dying.
“And one of the reasons they’re dying is because in urban environments, they become very confused with urban pollution and smog and they need places to nest.”
Blum and her sister came up with the initial idea for the rooftop bee hotel.
Their concept was then developed with the hotel, Sustainable.TO Architecture + Building and the bee experts at Pollinator Partnership Canada, who helped complete the design. Four more bee hotels will be built in Toronto and one in Guelph.
Fairmont is looking at having bee hotels on the rooftops of the other hotels in their chain.
h/t: CBC
