Honey Bees and Herb Gardens featured at Chicago Marriott Downtown

RCCongress 2010 venue takes initiative in environmental responsibility

When we picked a red flower with a green leaf as part of the logo for RCCongress 2010, we had no idea it would tie in so neatly with our convention hotel.

The Chicago Marriott Downtown hotel is known for a number of its unique initiatives, including an in-house honey-making operation and an herb and vegetable garden located on its own roof. The projects are part of the Marriott's efforts to be environmentally responsible by engaging in green activities.

Each spring, the hotel releases upon Chicago's flora some 200,000 Italian five-striped honey bees, which fly from its Michigan Avenue location to Grant Park, Lincoln Park – wherever there are flowers in the city – to pollinate the buds, before heading back to three beehives housed on the hotel's ninth floor.

Once home – and they always return – the bees begin producing the honey used in hotel desserts and pastries and in the honey wheat craft beer made by a local brewer and sold in the hotel lobby.

Banquet Chef Nathan Duensing says they were amazed by the bees' prodigious output when they first began producing honey last year.

"We were expecting about 50 pounds of honey from the bees but we actually got about 200 pounds from the bees," Duensing said before explaining the floral scent that characterizes the honey.

"I think it's due to all the lush flora we have here in Chicago. The city plants flowers right on Michigan Avenue about every other week in the summer and we've got black locust trees over on Ohio Street, which the bees like, so there really are a lot of great flowers for them to go out and pollinate."

For all their production of honey, the bees are just a small part of what makes the hotel green.

The Marriott Downtown incorporates a slew of environmentally friendly measures into its daily routine, including meeting room tables made from recycled material, a water and energy saving linen program, water saving showers heads and toilets in guest rooms, and sensors and water conserving faucets in public restrooms.

But Duensing really rhapsodizes about the Marriott's sustainable agriculture initiatives, including the hotel's herb and vegetable gardens, which share ninth floor quarters with the beehives.

The hotel's rooftop garden, with some 30 varieties of herbs, and vegetables such as beets, kale, tomatoes and peppers, supplies all of the hotel's herbs and a large portion of its vegetables. As Duensing asks, "What could be more sustainable than getting it from your rooftop?"

The Marriott buys the rest – always the best of the season's crop – from small farms throughout the area.

Duensing, from southern Illinois, comes by his enthusiasm for food and farmers – and the relation between them – naturally. He's the son of a second generation farmer and his wife's father also is a farmer. "Without the farmers, there's no food, so we try to work with them," he says.

Buying produce from small farmers in the tri-state area drastically reduces the distance food travels from the farm to table, which increases the flavor and freshness of the food while reducing its carbon footprint, to the benefit of the environment, the economy and the hotel's customers.

Eager to share some of the secrets of the bees and the herbs and the vegetables, Duensing extends an invitation to RCCongress 2010 participants: "We'd love for you to come up and see the garden and the beehives. We've got bee suits, so if you want we can put on a bee suit and go outside and check out the bees."

Ninth floor, here we come!