CHICAGO—It’s said having children changes everything. For Executive Chef Sean Curry, becoming a father not only changed his own life, it changed the lives of some 110,000 bees that now call the Hilton Chicago/Oak Brook Hills Resort & Conference Center home.
Curry, a state certified beekeeper, has established a colony of bees at the 386-room property that is playing a part not only in sustaining the local environment, but enhancing the hotel’s culinary offerings as well.
“I grew up in a bad part of Philadelphia and when I was a kid, my idea of fresh vegetables was the frozen stuff that we bought at the store or the huckster truck that came down the street. That’s pretty much all I knew about garden-fresh food. When my wife and I started having kids nine years ago, farm-to-table just started making headlines. I was working as executive sous chef at the Marriott Downtown, and we were reconcepting the restaurant. I said let’s do farm-to-table. Let’s buy locally. I wanted to take a different approach that had some heart and soul behind it and, quite honestly, where I could go home and say: ‘Hey, look what Dad’s doing.’”
Curry took his philosophy with him when he became executive chef at the Baltimore Renaissance Harbor Place. Just about that time, there was a surge in what’s known as colony collapse disorder, in which largely European worker bees disappear from colonies. In North America, there were numerous disappearances of western honeybee colonies.
“Bees pollinate a third of the world’s food source. I didn’t want my kids to grow up and not have natural food at their disposal. As a dad, I get super-paranoid about everything, and I thought, if bees disappear, what are my kids going to do? So, it made sense to become a beekeeper. I’ve been a beekeeper for about six years, and this is the third hotel I’ve done a bee program at,” said Curry, noting he also had six hives when he worked at the Marriott Naperville in Illinois, but no garden.
Now, at the Hilton Oak Brook resort, which is managed by Portfolio Hotels & Resorts, the executive chef has access to a 150-acre certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, which the bees help pollinate, near the on-property Willow Crest Golf Club.
Two months ago, Curry established nine hives, each holding a queen bee and approximately 10,000 to 15,000 worker bees. He keeps five hives within high grass near a pond that’s out of golfers’ range and another four hives nearby. The aggregate cost of the English Garden hives was some $3,000. The bees, which are Northern Italian bees, came from California
The executive chef does weekly inspections of the hives but said, “I kind of leave them alone as much as I can. Right now, I want them to build the wax comb. The queen has started laying her eggs, and we want them to get to work so we can get a good amount of honey.”
The yield will make a difference for the hotel’s F&B operations. “I don’t like using processed sugar, and I tend to use honey more as a sweetener in my vinaigrettes and such. Also, I buy all my cheese from the Midwest, and we’ll put honeycomb out with the cheese,” said the chef, noting the resort is putting in a 500-sq.-ft. chef’s garden as well.
Curry is a staunch advocate of promoting the apiary denizens. “Without bee hives, we’re going to be in big trouble…I want to do what I can as a chef to promote sustainability and natural products.”
—Stefani C. O’Connor