{"id":2278,"date":"2012-03-17T12:07:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-17T02:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/?p=2278"},"modified":"2017-07-24T18:01:42","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T08:01:42","slug":"honey-bees-rialto-intercontinental-melbourne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/honey-bees-rialto-intercontinental-melbourne\/","title":{"rendered":"Honey production at the Rialto Intercontinental Hotel, Melbourne"},"content":{"rendered":"

Built by Melbourne’s Grollo Family<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0partnership with St Martin’s Properties\u00a0in 1982-6 and still in the top\u00a05\u00a0tallest buildings in the southern hemisphere (and still well known for spectacular views), Melbourne’s Rialto Towers (43 & 63 storeys high – 253 metres)\u00a0are located right in the heart of the Melbourne CBD, at 495 Collins Street (corner of King Street).<\/p>\n

More than twelve months ago the Melbourne Rialto\u00a0Intercontinental Hotel<\/a> installed thousands of\u00a0Italian bees housed in several beehives, plus\u00a0 potted lavender bushes, onto the roof.\u00a0 The sky-high honey-producing project has been so successful that they’ve recently added 5 more hives to the 5 hives already housing 80,000 bees.\u00a0 Thus the honey production which could already reach 100 kilogrammes\u00a0per year, is expected to double.<\/p>\n

Bees apparently fly up to\u00a0five kilometres away in search of pollen, so the Rialto Intercontinental bees would presumably travel along the Yarra River between Batman and Olympic Parks, as well as south to the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, and up Collins Street (way above the trams) to the Treasury and Fitzroy Gardens.<\/p>\n

It’s quite surreal to imagine the\u00a0thousands of hardworking bees flying high above the Melbourne high rises, busily ferrying pollen back to the hive, completely oblivious to\u00a0the many thousands of people rushing around below.\u00a0 And vice versa.\u00a0\u00a0The CBD of any city is about as far removed from nature and food production as you can get.<\/p>\n

The Rialto honey bees aren’t going to feed the world but it is a fabulous example of a perfect way to produce food in an otherwise unproductive space in what is some of the most expensive urban real estate in Australia.\u00a0 With side benefits that must not be underestimated for the Rialto chefs and other staff who are apparently very much enjoying tending to the bees, and the hotel guests, who will be prompted to think about where their food comes from when they learn about the bees on the Rialto rooftop.\u00a0 The Intercontinental has a policy of aiming to operate in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner.\u00a0 So ‘low food miles’ are the order of the day in the main Rialto restaurant, Alluvial, which sources all ingredients from within a 200km radius.<\/p>\n

The first Intercontinental Hotel to introduce rooftop beehives (and only other one to do so) is in Boston, USA.\u00a0 The Intercontinental Boston\u00a0hives were installed around Easter 2010 and the initial 10,000 bee population quadrupled by autumn.\u00a0 Honey production was so successful, despite the severity\u00a0of the first\u00a0winter, that more hives\u00a0added last year with an expectation that the bee population will reach 120,000.\u00a0 The\u00a0Boston Intercontinental has\u00a0live\u00a0video footage in one of the hotel restaurants for guests to observe what the bees are up to any time of the day or night, without having to brave the elements or risk being stung.\u00a0 The honey produced is used in the Boston Intercontinental’s restaurant dishes and drinks\u00a0as well as in the spa beauty treatments.\u00a0 The on-site apiary is surely an ideal way to foster an appreciation of food production.<\/p>\n

When production is sufficient, the Rialto Intercontinental Melbourne & Boston Intercontinental both intend selling the on-site produced honey to guests, in addition to including it in their restaurant meals\u00a0and gifting\u00a0jars to VIP guests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Built by Melbourne’s Grollo Family\u00a0in\u00a0partnership with St Martin’s Properties\u00a0in 1982-6 and still in the top\u00a05\u00a0tallest buildings in the southern hemisphere (and still well known for spectacular views), Melbourne’s Rialto Towers (43 & 63 storeys high – 253 metres)\u00a0are located right in the heart of the Melbourne CBD, at 495 Collins Street (corner of King Street). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,7,11],"tags":[176,179],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2278"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5975,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions\/5975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}