Jane Henderson
The bees have sweet digs 50 feet above a busy downtown street.
In exchange for free rent in artist-painted hives, they supply fragrant honey for human hotel guests. The colorful hives have a south-facing view, around the corner from an outdoor dining patio and blocks from apartment balconies.
No one has expressed concern, if they've even noticed their buzzy neighbors, says Will Rogers, food and beverage director at 21c Museum Hotel at 1528 Locust Street.
The hives were covered and wheeled through the Downtown West hotel lobby in late May, past a rotund water-filled sculpture, and taken by elevator to their fourth-floor landing. The hotel is already selling jarred honey.
"It's really floral," Rogers says. "It even smells like flowers."
The honey is a collaboration between 21c and beekeeper Scott Holifield of Hawthorne Honey.
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Holifield is one of a growing number of urban beekeepers in St. Louis -- although possibly the only one selling ambrosia from the 63103 and 63101 ZIP codes. As a hobby, beekeeping in the city seems to be growing despite some challenges and even questions about whether honeybees may be displacing native pollinators.
But the collaboration between the hotel (a glamorous re-do of an old YMCA) and Hawthorne Honey is a win-win, both men say. On an October day, Holifield harvested about 100 pounds of honey from the four rooftop hives decorated with painted clouds and blocks of color by artist Jayvn Solomon. Meanwhile, in the hotel's shop, vacationers can buy a small, TSA-approved jar to take home for $10 or a larger one for $20.
Rogers, who previously had put hives on the Austin, Texas, hotel where he worked, knew his restaurants could use hives in St. Louis. In the meantime, Holifield had been standing in line to get coffee at the hotel's cafe, Good Press. A hotel executive was in line in front of him. They started talking and he give CFO Sarah Robbins an elevator pitch about putting hives on the hotel. A match was born.
The hotel plans to start using more of the honey in Good Press and its restaurant Idol Wolf, with perhaps special dining or tasting events next year. The product is even unique to the downtown area because Rogers believes the bees are collecting pollen from trees on the riverfront and possibly the Gateway Arch grounds.
Bee curious
It was bees, not their product, that first intrigued Holifield, a pharmacist who clearly likes some of the science of beekeeping. His mother had told him stories of his father harvesting honey from wild bee hives. Later, when he learned about colony collapse disorder linked to dying bees, he decided to go to a class with the Eastern Missouri Beekeeping Association.
He and his husband had moved to a house in Compton Heights on Hawthorne Boulevard (yes, the inspiration for his product's name). "I had learned that urban beekeeping was great," Holifield says. "You didn't have to be out the country in the middle of the field. You could do it at home."
A neighbor shared some of his own bees' honey with Holifield, who was taken aback: What makes this honey taste this way, he wondered. It was so different than the sweetener from grocery stores.
Now he has hives in several ZIP codes, including with several families in Ladue. He doesn't mix the honeys and says they all taste different. Urban bees may seek many different sources in parks and yards for food, says Holifield, who sells Hawthorne Honey at the Tower Grove Farmers Market. He believes hives in the country may face more monocultures.
Holifield thinks the 21c hotel bees are harvesting nectar from black locust and tulip poplar trees in the spring. But when it comes to bee behavior, they are similar and fascinating.
He points out
* The hive's queen can lay 1,000-2,000 eggs a day. Bees only live six to eight weeks in the summer, so the hive always needs new members.
* Female bees are the workers, bringing back nectar and pollen and tending the queen. Male bees just mate with queens from other hives to ensure genetic diversity.
* If a bee stings a person, the stinger should be pulled out immediately because it will continue pumping venom even detached from the bee's body.
* When nectar is unavailable, bees can become agitated. They also know when a storm is coming or their hive is threatened. But if people don't approach agitated bees, they are unlikely to be stung.
* A "swarm" is kind of a misnomer because bees are usually docile.
"You need to be respectful, but a bee is not usually going to sting you unless you step on it," he says. That said, one of the most frequent questions he gets from people is whether he wears a bee suit and carries a "smoker thing" (yes to both). The smoke helps calm bees while harvesting honey.
Setting up a hive
Beekeeping is "definitely growing" here, says Dan Brouk, president of Eastern Missouri Beekeepers Association. "There's an interest in helping honeybees, keeping honeybees."
The group's membership numbers in the mid-300s, he says, with several people, like him, keeping hives in their South City backyards.
Brouk recommends that interested newcomers join a beekeeping group: "This is something you do not want to do by yourself." Beekeeping is harder than it might seem and talking to others and getting first-hand experience is essential, he says.
Another association, St. Louis Beekeepers, keeps a mailing list of about 500.
Eugene Makovec of Foley is the former president of Three Rivers Beekeepers and edits American Bee Journal. He says beekeeping is not a cheap hobby -- getting started costs about $500 for a hive and bees -- but over time it's one hobby that may actually "pay for itself" through honey sales.
He says Three Rivers has about 450 members. Although the state of Missouri does not require beekeepers to register hives, Makovec saw increased interest when colony collapse disorder was in the news and during COVID, he says. Now membership has leveled off, but there are likely many more beekeepers who "fly under the radar."
He agrees that some new keepers don't stick with beekeeping, finding it requires more work than they expected.
Makovec has heard criticism that urban beekeeping in some cities has become too popular, but he thinks that is unlikely here.
In July, a Canadian magazine, Rewilding, lamented that the number of honeybee colonies in Montreal soared from 250 in 2013 to 3,000 in 2020. It said:
"Urban beekeepers focus on honeybees, which in much of the world are a non-native, domesticated species that is threatening to out-compete native, wild species for food sources in urban areas."
Last year, an alarmist story in the New York Times cited a 2020 report by the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, that the quantity of hives in London posed a threat to other bee species.
Bees, often honeybees, pollinate about 100 crops in the U.S., according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Makovec lives in a more rural area but the journal editor doesn't put much stock in the worries about a honeybee takeover here. Bees range 2 to 3 miles for food, and he says his ignore his own wildflowers. In addition, native bees often feed on different flowers than honeybees, he says.
Brouk agrees that "all pollinators are important" but says honeybees can't even access some nectar sought by some native bees.
Nicole Miller-Struttmann, associate professor of biological sciences at Webster University, does not discount the concern over native pollinators, but she says she knows no evidence in Missouri that proves honeybees are or are not hogging the food sources.
The director of Shutterbee, a bee program that ran through 2023, said photos and other data from the program showed native bees in St. Louis, in addition to a couple of non-native wild bee species downtown. Apparently the concrete jungle was no barrier for the bees, but Miller-Struttmann says residents can help native pollinators by having a somewhat "messy" backyard with little pesticide use and a variety of trees, shrubs and flowers.
Missouri has more than 450 species of native bees, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation. It recommends planting more wildflower gardens with a wide variety of native species to support native pollinators. It's a suggestion that farmers are also getting.
The primary threats to pollinators, according to the University of Missouri Extension, are "habitat destruction/degradation; exposure to pesticides and other agrochemicals; and pest, pathogen and disease spread."
'They're safe up there'
Holifield sees no signs that honeybees have overpopulated St. Louis, and he would like to place more hives on roofs. Important to keeping to rooftop hives, though, is making sure there is easy access and that they are safe for the keeper.
There are some advantages to keeping hives elevated, he says. For one thing, predators like raccoons are less likely to climb four stories or more to break into hives and devour bees. People also won't accidentally stumble across the hives. "They're safe up there," he says.
Hive beetles, an indicator a hive may be unhealthy, have no soil on the hotel roof in order to reproduce. He also believes there is likely less herbicide and pesticides used in the city than in farm country.
At the Chase Park Plaza hotel on Kingshighway, hives were installed in 2018, but the bees didn't last during COVID. After the pandemic, the hotel got new bees and the honey is used in its restaurants.
One St. Louis beekeeper kept hives for the Hyatt Regency at the Arch for three years. But the challenge for Jane Sueme's hives was harsh winters and winds from the riverfront. The bees died.
She told Holifield about her concerns. "I hope he has better luck," she says.
She says worries about native bees are a "hot topic," but believes paving over nature with parking lots and new construction is "worse than honeybees."
"In our backyard beekeeping experience, all of the pollinators are getting what they need," she says. Sueme, who has kept bees for 29 years, has sold beekeeping equipment for 15 years and has had a store, Isabee's in Fenton, for six.
On Oct. 26, the Missouri State Beekeepers Association is to meet in Arnold for a conference, and Sueme said climate challenges would likely be the current concern: "Climate change is creating extreme swings in weather. We believe the bees are suffering to some extent, so we're doing more insulated hives."
The Isabee's store stocks at least a dozen local vendors who sell their honey. Sueme says:
"It kind of surprises me, but it seems like every year there are more people interested in this hobby."
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