Bees Check In To Posh Hotels

New guests are buzzing about their stay at some luxurious hotels. Just watch out, because these guests might not be the friendliest if you get in their way. After all, the guests are bees.

Honeybees are checking in to the posh Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. This famous New York hotel is a favorite stop for celebrities and many U.S. presidents, but now they're being joined by these busy bugs.

The honeybees aren't pets for guests during their stay and they won't be staying in guest rooms, so visitors don't have to worry. The beehives are on the rooftop of The Waldorf Astoria hotel, which is harvesting natural honey and also using the bees to help pollinate plants in the middle of the large city.

Andrew Cote, the Waldorf's beekeeper-in-residence told the Associated Press, "Today about half the population of each hive, the foragers are flying mostly in the direction of Central Park. They're plucking up pollen, nectar, water. They're bringing it back to their hives, to their homes."

The Waldorf Astoria hotel is a recent addition to the hotel beekeeping business. The hotel rooftop beekeeping business has been taking place around the world for many years. The Fairmont hotel chain has 18 rooftop beekeeping hotels including places like Toronto and Vancouver in Canada, and San Francisco and Washington, DC in the U.S.. The InterContinental Boston also has beekeeping hotels. The Paris Westin Hotel boasts about their beekeeping business where workers harvest up to 110 pounds of honey a year.

Urban beekeeping is part of an attempt for hotels to "go green" and help the environment. Honeybee pollination benefits one-third of the nation's diet. For New York City, the project will help to pollinate some of the one million trees that will be planted in the city over the next decade.

The Intercontinental New York Times Square recently joined its sister hotel in Boston by installing its first beehive. Andrew Gajary, general manager of the hotel is reaping in its benefits, saying "In terms of sustainability, it's not only giving back to the environment, I'm no longer having to go out and get packaged honey from hundreds of miles away."

At the Waldorf, the bees can be seen from certain rooms and guests have the opportunity to take tours of the hives.

The bees arrived at the Waldorf by luxury car in April and are situated on the 20^th floor roof deck. There are six hives, one of which already has 20,000 bees. The hotel expects the honey to be ready for harvest by summer, when there could be as many as 300,000 bees by that time.