Urban Bee Colony Arrives Atop Restaurant In Downtown Appleton, WI

Maureen Wallenfang, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

June 4, 2018

APPLETON - Rye Restaurant's rooftop beehives buzz with activity today, but it took some persistence to get everything humming along smoothly.

It started out as head chef Nick Morse's simple idea: Put a few honeybee hives on the roof and harvest honey for Rye, the chic restaurant at 308 W. College Ave.

He decided to add in some raised garden beds to provide both the bees and the restaurant with fresh herbs, lavender, tomatoes, lettuces, vegetables and edible flowers.

While Appleton has allowed beekeeping inside the city limits since 2015, it took additional permitting to allow bees in the business district.

Appleton’s first downtown apiary is on the roof of the CopperLeaf Hotel, which is attached to the restaurant. 

By the time permits were prepared, hives ready, bees ordered by the pound from California and everything was a go, Wisconsin weather was far from bee-friendly.

The bees arrived in the middle of the April storm that dumped two feet of snow on Appleton.

“We had to shovel our way to the hives,” said Morse. “Some of the bees hit the snow and we instantly lost them. We had a good amount of loss. Then one of the queens died, or flew the coop.”

Morse and his chief beekeeping assistant, Sami Hansen, were not daunted.

They ordered a new queen, who arrived in her own caged box.

The two hives in their roof-top apiary are now both buzzing with bees building honeycomb and queens laying eggs.

“By late summer we’ll be able to harvest the honey,” said Hansen.

The bees are already collecting pollen from sources like flowering trees, and can travel up to a mile, they said. 

"What does Appleton taste like? We'll find out when they create their honey," said Morse, who is dreaming up recipes for desserts and meat glazes using honey and honeycomb.

Alicia Griebenow is a beekeeper who mentored Morse and Hansen, and works seasonally at Honey Bee Ware, a Greenville store and beekeeping resource.

She said she isn’t aware of any other Fox Cities businesses doing beekeeping outside of commercial honey producers.

“They’re pioneers,” Griebenow said. “The farm-to-table movement is part of it. They’re growing it and they know where it came from. They’ve done their research and want to do it correctly.”

Rye Restaurant has the only permit for a beehive in the central business district in Appleton, said Tim Mirkes, environmental health supervisor for the city's health department. He said that besides Rye, there are three residential beehive permits in the city, an institutional permit for Lawrence University and an urban farm permit for Riverview Gardens. 

Morse built a protective shelter for the rooftop hives. He built six raised garden beds using donated materials, and a water collection system.

The rooftop project is something different and fun, and has become a collective hobby for restaurant employees, he said.

“Everyone has gotten involved in it, from the front of the house to the kitchen. It’s become everyone’s project,” he said.

He figures it might eventually break even after the investment of about $1,800 in honeybees, protective jackets and netted hats, equipment and garden materials.

“The goal isn’t to make money. It’s to set us apart and give us a fun activity. It’s to keep things interesting,” Morse said.  

Ultimately, Morse and Hansen hope to keep learning and to sustain their colonies.

Nationally, U.S. beekeepers lost 40 percent of their colonies during the year ending March 31, according to a survey released May 23 by Auburn University and University of Maryland researchers. Losses are said to be from parasitic varroa mites, pesticides and environmental factors tied to climate change, like abnormal temperatures, storms and hurricanes.

Here, Hansen said the local losses are double that, about 80 percent, based on statistics from Honey Be Ware.

Managing pests and harsh winters are a part of the challenge.  

She said they’ll buy organic treatments and insulate the hives over the next winter to keep as many bees as possible.