The executive chef of the Lincolnshire Marriott Resort is feeling content again as he prepares to collect an estimated 20 gallons of fresh honey from a collection of beehives situated on the hotel’s grounds.
Last winter, the Marriott bee population was in a dire state after someone made his or her way into the garden and sprayed insecticide throughout the apiary, eventually killing many of the bees inside, said Executive Chef Pierre Daval.
The act not only hindered Daval’s ability to incorporate the honey into his kitchen but also affected nearby Lake Bluff Brewing’s production schedule, which used honey generated by the Marriott bees in the business’ Honey Badger beer.
“We’ve never had this happen before and hopefully it doesn’t happen again,” Daval said. “It’s awesome to have the bees back.”
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The effort to rebuild the bee population at the Marriott kicked into a higher gear earlier this spring, when a UPS truck carrying 12 packages, each weighing three pounds and holding 10,000 bees, arrived at the resort.
As the fall season begins, Daval is completing his final harvest of the honey the new bees produced, nearly a year after wondering if he could do it again.
Back in November 2015, Daval visited the bee colonies, located near the Marriott produce garden, and found three cans of Raid bug spray and more than 150,000 dead insects, he recalled. Although most of the bees survived the initial attack, the colonies couldn’t withstand the lingering effects, he said.
Working with little evidence, Lincolnshire police never made an arrest in the incident, he said.
“One after another, they all started dying,” Daval said. “By Christmas, we had no bees.”
Since 2010, the Marriott has maintained a honeybee apiary alongside the garden, which Daval uses to work fresh vegetables and fruits into his dishes. He typically uses the honey produced from the bees to make butter, sorbet and granola, he said.
The kitchen also markets the honey to other businesses at a time when consumers increasingly are looking for farm-to-table and locally sourced foods. Aside from Lake Bluff Brewing Company, Daval incorporates the honey into Koval’s whiskey.
After losing the bees, Daval and his staff used a power washer on the beehives to wash away the insecticides, he said. Once he received the new bees from California and 12 queen bees from Hawaii, he turned to Morton Arboretum beekeeper Greg Fischer for advice on how to get them working to produce honey.
He advised separating the queen bees from some of the other bees for a week, Daval said.
“We had to give them some time to get used to the queens and take her as their leader,” Daval said. “Now, things are going great. The bees are doing awesome.”
The bee population at the Marriott jumped as a result. Six of the hives are close to 50,000 occupants each, while the other six hives all have more than 25,000 bees, Daval said.
By the end of the fall harvest, Daval and chef Everardo Fajardo expect to have hauled in 20 gallons of fresh honey.
Pato Thornycroft, general manager of Lake Bluff Brewing, said he’s happy to see the bees repopulate the Marriott after his company had to temporarily switch last winter to another source of honey to make several batches of the brewery’s honey-flavored beer.
“That honey, it’s such a high-quality honey,” Thornycroft said. “It really does make a difference. Having to use something else gave a variance to our product. Now, our beer is back to what it was meant to be.”
Although the incident last fall surprised Daval, attacks against honeybees have declined in recent years as people become more educated on honeybees’ role in the food chain, said Fischer, who has been keeping bees since 1968.
He recalled how people would set his beehives on fire or run them over with trucks.
“Now, people are realizing that our Earth depends on these creatures,” Fischer said.
Twitter @RonnieAtPioneer