Food Drink

Rooftop CBD Beehive Causing A Buzz

Comfy beds and great service—that’s what you expect of a hotel, right? What about fresh honey? Not only does the Mayfair Hotel have the best beds, they’ve also got rooftop bees hard at work in their hives!

Comfy beds and great service—that’s what you expect at a hotel, right? What about fresh honey? Not only does the Mayfair Hotel have Adelaide’s best beds, they’ve also got fully productive bees hard at work in their rooftop hives. Their delicious honey is now available for sale to guests and the public! Installed on an unused corner of the Mayfair’s roof in December 2015, the Mayfair rooftop bees are tended by executive chef Bethany Finn, who is also a trained apiarist.

Bethany Finn with Mayfair Rooftop Bees

Mayfair Rooftop Bees

“Our aim with the Mayfair Rooftop Bees was to not only produce a superior product for use in the hotel’s kitchen, but to encourage the growth of Adelaide’s urban bee population and to address the global issue of dwindling bee numbers,” Finn said.

“Our new season raw honey is cool temperature extracted to protect the chemical structure and beneficial enzymes of the honey. Unfiltered with little touches of wax, the Mayfair Rooftop Honey delivers a beautiful blend of mixed flora tastes and butterscotch.”

The Mayfair’s is one of a select few pioneering luxury hotels worldwide to keep its own bees. The bees’ hive is surrounded by a white picket fence, water fountain and rooftop garden which acts as a windbreak, and their flight path takes in Government House and the Adelaide Botanic Garden.

Mayfair Hotel general manager Martin Radcliffe said the hotel was committed to sustainable tourism, with the rooftop bees project an important way of achieving this.

“The Mayfair rooftop bees not only enable the hotel to contribute to solving a growing environmental problem, they provide us with a superior product that can be used in dishes across the hotel, and a real point of interest for our guests,” Martin said.

“We’re delighted that the bees are now consistently producing enough raw honey to enable us to share this wonderful product with guests, who can purchase it to take home.”

The honey produced by the Mayfair Rooftop Bees is a star ingredient in several of the Mayflower Restaurant’s desserts which feature on their decadent dessert trolley, including Honey and Wildflower Gateaux and Honey Panna Cotta. The honey is also served as an accompaniment on the hotel’s breakfast buffet, and is the signature ingredient in Hennessy rooftop bar’s popular cocktail, The Honey Trap—a Caprioska with honey-infused vodka, lime, ginger and mint.

Mayfair Rooftop Bees Honey is available from Mayflower Bar for $7.90 (140g jar) or $14.90 (350g jar).

Go and try some of the amazing looking treats that the bees and the chefs have been working on!

More News

To Top