Bee's Knees

Being a greenie is a tough gig. You try to do all the right things. You utilize only those reusable grocery bags when shopping, never the terrible plastic ones that are drowning our oceans in an endless eddy of never-to-degrade synthetic garbage. You recycle – of course – and clean your well-insulated home under the glare of CFL bulbs, with only the earth-friendliest products.

And still, things like the Gulf oil spill happen. The planet keeps getting warmer, and fully one-third of honeybees – those wonderful little pollinators our entire ecosystem depends upon – have disappeared thanks to an as yet unexplained nightmare scientists have dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder.

It’s so easy to get discouraged. It starts to seem – I admit it, it’s happened to me – like nothing you do ultimately matters. Why, you ask yourself, bother? Your little drop can’t make a difference. But then, you get a bit of good news – an example, maybe, of someone doing right. And if you’re lucky it reminds you that a bunch of little drops all add up to a big bucketful.

That’s pretty much how I felt when I heard about Shawnee and the bees. I’ve loved the Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort since staying there last fall with my mom. The property, where cool peeps like Jackie Gleason and Lucille Ball and Bob Hope used to hang, is not your normal glossy, soulless hotel. It has an old school warmth and charm that utterly won me over. But since learning about the resort’s bee project, I dig the place even more.

Apparently, there are now 60,000 honeybees buzzing around Shawnee’s Kitchen Garden. After a busy day pollinating the field’s flowers, they return to one of six colonies, where they produce honey used in Very Special Old Pale beer, which is created in the resort’s on-site brewery, ShawneeCraft. Like the bees, the garden itself is a nice step forward for the resort down sustainability’s long road. Dug in May 2009, it was planted with vegetables and herbs requested by Shawnee’s chefs. While most of the plants grown there end up on the table, some of the Kitchen Garden’s organic spices and pumpkins are reserved for use in the brewery’s tasty Pumpkin Saison.

Obviously, Shawnee’s guests benefit from the grown-next-door-fresh ingredients used in the resort’s kitchen and brewery – and happy guests ultimately make for a nice bottom line. But having met the Kirkwoods, the family that owns Shawnee, I can’t help but think that for them, initiating environmentally helpful practices might come down to more than just good business or savvy marketing. They seem like the kind of down to earth people who take pride in doing right. And providing a happy home for our beleaguered bee friends? That’s right for sure.