Honey From Lurie Garden Bees Ready For Harvest
(CBS) -- Lurie Garden has been providing honey as well as an urban oasis in Millennium Park and now's harvest time, reports WBBM's John Cody.
Honey bees stay busy in Lurie Gardens though they're not necessarily visible to visitors because of some careful traffic planning. Their hive faces a tall hedge of arbor vitae.
"We do that purposefully so that the bees won't be forced to go up those trees and no one will really notice that the hives are there, they will be flying over the heads of any visitors by many, many feet," said Lurie Garden horticulturalist Laura Ekasetya.
Says while the bees turn out 180 pounds of honey, she sells only 60 pounds.
"Probably, we could have had more than that but we want to be really kind to our bees," Ekasetya said. "It is really important to me that bee-keeping be kind."
She reports floral and mint overtones in this year's Lurie Garden honey which will be up for sale October 23 in the Urban Wild party at the Pritzker pavilion.