Choice Hotels International, which moved from its longtime Rockville, Maryland, headquarters to a new corporate base in North Bethesda last December, has about 150,000 honeybees that have moved in along with its 400 or so employees.
Choice Hotels has partnered with Bee Downtown, which has installed beehives at more than 500 corporate headquarters buildings from New York to Florida, to install three hives at its Pike & Rose headquarters. Bee Downtown will maintain the hives. It estimates the Choice Hotels colony will produce more than 100 pounds of honey in a matter of a few months.
The honey will be free to Choice Hotels headquarters employees.
Choice will use the hive installation, called the “Bee Hotel,” for educational programming, Q&A sessions and honey and cheese tastings for its employees. They’ve been installed at the end of Choice’s sixth-floor outdoor terrace.
Bee Downtown said bees can pollinate within a 3-mile radius from their hives, and 70 of the top 100 food crops in the U.S. are pollinated by bees.
The for-profit company was founded by Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, a fourth-generation beekeeper. Notable partners in its corporate hive program include Delta Air Lines, Microsoft, Chick-fil-A, Cisco Systems, and (fittingly) Burt’s Bees.
Choice Hotels occupies about 105,000 square feet at the 276,000-square-foot, 16-story building at 915 Meeting St.
In addition to office tenants, Federal Realty Trust’s Pike & Rose has more than 50 retail and restaurant tenants, 900 apartments and condos, and a Canopy by Hilton hotel.
Dozens of buildings in the D.C. area, including office buildings, government buildings, hospitals, hotels and restaurants, have installed urban bee hives in recent years.
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