23-07-2025
Sustainability In SF
Solar Power Station over Victorian homes Haight Ashbury residential district San Francisco - ... More California USA.
While the Bay Area generally keeps its food scene local, some inventive hospitality folks are going above and beyond the usual. The W San Francisco has had a couple of bee hives on its roof for more than a decade and launched its beehive experience in fall of last year where guests can visit the bees and enjoy a honey-based Buzz & Brunch menu during the weekend.
The beehive on the roof.
The two hives are home to 60,000 bees. They are overseen by W Hotel beekeeper Roger Garrison and the number of bees is slated to double in size by the end of August.
It's a sustainable play that is supplying the hotel with its own unique honey with which to accent its dishes. While the honey can be enjoyed in food, and small takeaway jars, guests can also make the journey to the roof to see what the bees are doing and come the fall the W Hotel will be offering larger corporate bookings for 15 to 20 people.
Garrison is a second-generation bee keeper and is a wealth of information on what makes honey bees unique and how they function. Just pull on your roomy, white one-piece protective suit—if you do head up there—with the netting over your face and you too can get intimate with the bees.
The Queen
Realistic Bee Queen Mother with Golden Crown. Detailed Illustration of a Queen Bee on White. Macro ... More Insect, Concept of Food Industry, or Beekeeping
Apparently only the queen bee lays eggs and can lay up to two thousand eggs a day, according to Garrison. There is also a whole protocol about who fills in the honeycomb and why ideally a 90+ Fahrenheit temperature is needed within the hive. It's fascinating stuff.
Currently at the 6,000 bees Honey bees at W Hotel are, by the way, also not related to the Yellow Jackets who fly away with a piece your hamburger at a picnic or sting you. Literally dozens on them had nested on my protective suit and you could easily flick them away. They were just dying to go back to work.
The Bee's Knees cocktail
Apparently, a bee's life span is only about six weeks and they do die when they sting you. There is only one queen at a time and should two reign, they are considered mother-daughter empresses. Female worker bees forage up to two miles, and sometimes even four, for nectar and pollen. In that the bees work hard for their honey; Garrison only takes the honey they can live without.
The Brunch
Inside the dining room at Trace where the brunch is served.
The W Hotel launched the honey buzzy brunch at its Trace restaurant last year. It features a constantly changing menu of honey-infused dishes. They can vary from local cheese to duck or salmon. Our lunch featured delicious honey-glazed duck with a side of crunchy, local creamed corn.
It was followed by a beautiful, and divine, panna cotta. The restaurant even has honey-infused cocktails, one is a riff on the Bee's Knee's, garnished with an edible flower; another is the Beekeepers' Paloma, made with Casamigos Mezcal, grapefruit juice, lime juice and W rooftop honey.
The pannacotta at Trace.
If you are not up for a cocktail there is some nice Sancerre on offer by the glass as well as California Pinot Noir. The brunch offering is an incredibly lovely sustainable package that allows visitors and guests to take a dive into sustainability. As a final touch, the paper the menu is printed on can be planted and will produce wildflowers.
The W Hotel may not be the first to have a bee hive on the roof, I have seen it before at other West Coast hotels, but it's a great reminder how we can take care of the environment and enjoy the fruits of its labor.
