Ethical Report Detours
Ethical Travel Report:
How Sweet it is, Indeed By Karen Leiva
FAIRMONT WATERFRONT POLLINATOR ©FAIRMONT HOTELS & RESORTS
Wearing a white beekeepers’ hat and veil, my bare hands are gripping a tray with hundreds (maybe thousands) of buzzing bees. It’s quite a rush. Until I feel something crawling on my finger. My worst fear is not a sting, but rather dropping the tray and sending all these bees into a swarm of confusion. I hold on and take a breath. For such a little insect, they sure do make a big impact – in more ways than one. There’s been a lot of buzz in recent years about saving the bees, but Fairmont Hotels and Resorts have been providing a haven for bees on their rooftops and in their gardens for more than a decade. There are more than 40 honeybee apiaries and wild bee hotels on Fairmont properties around the world. Here, at the Fairmont Waterfront in Vancouver, there are approximately 250,000 bees on the rooftop producing a lot of honey – about 200 pounds of it every year. In addition to the honeybee apiary, the rooftop’s pollinator 52 • Vacations ® • Winter 2019
bee hotel is designed to attract, support and protect indigenous bees by giving them a much-needed habitat. The hotel offers tours that are open to the general public and its guests for a chance to see the bees and learn more about them. The tours are led by a member of the hotel’s Bee Team. So passionate are the staff at Fairmont Waterfront about the bees that they took the project one step further by partnering with expert beekeeper, Julia Common, co-founder of Hives for Humanity, to introduce 27 mason bees houses (these bees are non-stinging and key pollinators) to its garden and across the city. Hives for Humanity works with people from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, one of the poorest areas in Canada. Through Hives for Humanity, the Fairmont Waterfront rooftop garden and hives are currently maintained by people from this neighbourhood. “We have a lot of marginalized people in the
