Korea: Hilton turns hotel rooftop into urban bee farm in Pangyo
“Honey bees are true superheroes of nature”
By Lee Hae-rin
Korea Times
June 4, 2023
Excerpt:
SEONGNAM, Gyeonggi Province ? “Here, you can see all these bees growing safe and healthy in the beehive. No need to be afraid of them,” urban beekeeper Park Jin said, lifting a wooden hive frame filled with glittering honey and buzzing bees on the rooftop of a newly built hotel in Pangyo in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province.
“Honey bees usually forage within a radius of about two kilometers, so this very colony of bees nestled on this rooftop makes significant contributions to building a healthy ecosystem in the area,” he said, looking around at the building’s surroundings, full of mountains with acacia forests.
Clad head-to-toe in his beekeeping suit, Park and DoubleTree by Hilton Seoul Pangyo’s staffers took the first harvest of honey produced on this rooftop on June 2, in celebration of the United Nations-designated World Environment Day, which fell on June 5.
The hotel is now a buzzing home to 10 beehives, housing some 200,000 bees which produce a total of around 100 kilograms to 120 kilograms of fresh honey every three weeks. Amid the declining number of pollinators worldwide due to urbanization and pesticide use, such practice aims to maintain the urban bee population, Park added.
Since its opening in April, the new DoubleTree by Hilton Seoul Pangyo, conveniently situated a 30-minute drive from southern Seoul, has been operating the urban bee farm with the help of Urban Bees Seoul, a pioneering urban beekeeping company in Korea founded by Park.
