In late 2013, the luxury hotel partnered with The Urban Beehive company to find a home for five busy bee hives. The hives have now produced 14 kilograms of honey for the hotel's guests to enjoy.
Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney is the first five-star luxury hotel in the city to start the urban beekeeping trend and The Rocks is proving to be the perfect playground for the Shangri-La bees. Urban bees produce a very unique flavour of honey because Sydney residents, rooftop gardens and even the Botanical Gardens have quite an exotic collection of trees and flowers.
In collaboration with The Urban Beehive, the hotel's Executive Chef Steven Krasicki takes care of the bees and oversees the harvest of honey and its distribution throughout the hotel's restaurants and kitchens.
"We're passionate about sustainability and producing what we can in-house; our bees are just the first step. Being environmentally responsible is part of our philosophy at Shangri-La and pollination is so important and valuable for our local environment," said Mr. Krasicki.
Many Australians do not realise that approximately one in every three mouthfuls of food consumed in Australia comes from the aid of pollination by honeybees. Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney has recognised this need and is taking conscious steps towards crafting more local, sustainable and ethical produce for its operation.
The homemade honey is currently used in the hotel kitchens to contribute to delicious recipes and offer guests raw unfiltered honeycomb on the breakfast buffet and Horizon Club Lounge.
In celebration of the recently harvested honey, Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney announces the fourth series of Dessert Degustation events taking place on 26 and 27 February 2014. Executive Pastry Chef Anna Polyviou will host the five-course dessert night with a takeaway pot of homemade honey in the pastry kitchen.
For enquiries and reservations about the Dessert Degustation event, please contact Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney on (61 2) 9250 6247 or e-mail discovertaste.slsn@shangri-la.com.
The bees at Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney live on a private terrace on Level 3 of the hotel, which is only accessible by staff. In addition to serving fresh honey and honeycomb for breakfast, Chef Steven is also exploring ways to produce candles from the leftover beeswax. The hotel also plans to launch an organic herb garden in the same space later this year to further complement the bee's pollination activity.
Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts remains committed to operating in an economically, socially and environmentally responsible manner while balancing the interests of diverse stakeholders. In striving to be a leader in corporate citizenship and sustainable development, a corporate-level CSR Committee drives the company's initiatives in the strategic areas of stakeholder relations, environment, health and safety, supply chain and employees. Under the umbrella of sustainability, Shangri-La's social responsibility programme consists of the two elements of "embrace" and "sanctuary." Embrace focuses on Shangri-La's Caring People Project, which aims to promote the highest level of education and health support in underprivileged communities. In sanctuary, the programme concentrates on Shangri-La's Care for Nature Project, which promotes the conservation and restoration of biodiversity. For more information, please access the CSR section on www.shangri-la.com.
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