Leslie Day - Honeybee Hotel: The Waldorf Astoria’s Rooftop Garden and the Heart of NYC

HONEYBEE HOTEL

2018 Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2018

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Day, Leslie, 1945 author.

Title: Honeybee hotel : the Waldorf Astorias rooftop garden and the heart of NYC /
Leslie Day.

Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017056665| ISBN 9781421426242 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 1421426242 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781421426259 (electronic) | ISBN 1421426250 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Bee cultureNew York (N.Y.) | Roof gardeningNew York (N.Y.)History. | Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (New York, N.Y.)History. | Honey plants.

Classification: LCC SF523.3.D39 2018 | DDC 638/.1097471dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056665

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Frontispiece: Honeybee anatomy and flower anatomy by Leslie Day

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Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible.

Book design by Kimberly Glyder

FOR THE CHEFS:
DAVID GARCELON, PETER BETZ, AND CALOGERO ROMANO

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
Anas Nin

The idea for this book came through a family connection. My nephew, Peter Betz, at that time the executive sous chef at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, told me that his boss, the newly hired director of culinary, David Garcelon, wanted to put beehives on the roof of the hotel. I was teaching science to middle school students at the time. Peter knew that my students studied pollinators and flowers, so the following year he arranged to give my husband and me a tour of the garden and apiary. The stories Peter told of the dedication of the staff at the Waldorf to the hives were spellbinding. Their completely volunteer efforts to build the hives and the raised garden beds were an inspiration. As a researcher, writer, and educator of the natural history of New York City, I felt a powerful connection to these bees and to the people at the hotel. Here were hardworking men and women, many of them immigrants, who cared about these tiny insects. And then there were the bees, whose lives were completely devoted to their community.

Peter told me that the hotel would share the honey and the produce grown on the roof with the homeless shelter and food pantry across the street at St. Bartholomews Episcopal Church. The lives of the workers at New Yorks Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the laborious bees, and the connection to the charitable work of St. Barts helping New Yorkers in desperate need of shelter and foodthis was a story that needed to be told.

The lives of humans and bees are intertwined and often parallel. Nothing on our planet escapes this construction. Except for the first three chapters on the history of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, the structure of this book follows a pattern that alternates between our species, Homo sapiens, and the industrious honeybee, Apis mellifera.

During the course of writing this story of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and its honeybee garden, the Hilton Corporation sold the Waldorf, its flagship hotel, which Conrad Hilton had called the greatest of them all, to Chinas Anbang Insurance Company. Readers will learn more about the fate of New York Citys most historic and iconic hotel in the epilogue.

Entomologists will forgive me, I hope, in my spelling of honeybee as one word. They prefer two, as Apis mellifera is but one of many bee species, though it is special in many regards. I have adopted the single-word spelling because it is a common literary usage and often preferred among beekeepers. If this were a technical volume, which it most assuredly is not, I would have followed their preference, and used honey bee. Let me also add that I have been as careful as possible to get the facts right. Mistakes, if there are any, are mine alone. The entomologists and beekeepers I mention in this book were very helpful through my interviews with them and their published research and books. If I misconstrued anything, forgive me.

HONEYBEE HOTEL

The opening of the new Waldorf Astoria is an event in the advancement of hotels, even in New York City. It carries great tradition in national hospitality marks the measure of [our] nations growth in power, in comfort and in artistry an exhibition of courage and confidence to the whole nation.

President Herbert Hoover, broadcasting from the White House, on opening day of the Waldorf Astoria, October 1, 1931

Trudging through six inches of slushy snow and carefully walking around black ice, I slogged east on 49th Street from where the D train deposited me at Rockefeller Center. I was on my way to meet David Garcelon, director of culinary at New York Citys famed Waldorf Astoria Hotel. I wanted to talk about his brainchild: a rooftop honeybee garden. As I walked through the winter urban landscape, I thought of the bees waiting out the winter snugly in their hives and felt the irony of choosing a day in late January to meet David, when the temperature was 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

The idea for this book began during a breakfast with my nephew, Peter Betz, then executive sous chef, who had been working his way up the chefs ladder at the Waldorf for twenty years. Eventually, Peter became executive chef of the hotel.

On a morning several years before my January trudge, my husband and I had met up with Peter; it was a decidedly warm day in the autumn of 2011. Thoughts of it crossed my mind as the cold wind of January bit into me at a street corner. We met Peter, his wife, Moriko, my brother-in-law Eizo, and his wife, Ruth, for an incredible breakfast buffet at Oscars Brasserie, the historic Waldorf Astoria restaurant. After feasting on smoked salmon, bagels, waffles, bacon, eggs, and fruit, Peter took us on a tour of the Waldorf Astoria. He guided us through the massive kitchens, the four-story Grand Ballroom, and all the famous public event spaces where presidents, heads of state, writers, artists, and musicians have performed, spoken, and inspired the world. His enthusiasm was contagious, and he shared wonderful stories about each historic room. Then he took us to the twentieth floor and out to the roof, where he talked about David Garcelons plans to establish honeybee hives and a full garden for the bees and chefs.

The summer of 2013 Peter again took us up to the roof. There we found a fully flowering chefs garden and six honeybee hives that sheltered as many as 300,000 bees producing honey and pollinating the flowering plants. Looking south we could see the magnificent art deco Chrysler Building with its glittering, stainless steel crown of terraced and radiating arches. Looking north below us was the magnificent tiled Byzantine dome of St. Bartholomews Church. Thirteen beds of herbs, spices, vegetables, and their edible nasturtium, lavender, thyme, dill, cilantro, daylily, squash blossom, chives, and basil flowers, surrounded by flowering apple and cherry trees, created a fragrant oasis twenty stories above Park and Lexington Avenues. The bees were covered in pollen from the flowers and were busy sopping up as much nectar from each blossom as their tiny honey stomachs could hold. As a naturalist and a New Yorker, I was enthralled by the art deco beauty of this most historic of hotels, and of the natural wonders that thrived on its roof twenty stories above the bustling city.