The residents of the 10th floor of the Brown Palace Hotel and Spa in Denver receive a few perks — later check-in, unconventional rooms and a separate elevator.

But this level isn’t home to a presidential or bridal suite. Instead, it’s where the hotel’s busiest patrons reside — in abodes with labels like “The Buzzidential Sweet” and the “Mile Hive City.”

The hotel currently keeps four honey beehives on its rooftop — with roughly 65,000 bees living in each. That’s more than a quarter of a million bees zipping overhead daily, darting around the ductwork. Since bees can fly only within a three- to four-mile radius to procure pollen, all of their time is spent in the city.

The Brown Palace is just one of hundreds of hotels worldwide that have started participating in urban beekeeping in the last few years. The Fairmont Royal York hotel in Toronto,for instance, claims to be the first in the world to have put bees to work on its roof, back in June of 2008. Melanie Coates, head beekeeper there, said hotel chef David Garcelon was inspired after hearing about hives located on top of the Paris Opera House.

“You can’t get a supplier any closer than your roof,” she said. “We are a part of the urban agriculture movement, and beekeeping is an extension of that.”

Just recently, Garcelon helped put bees on the Waldorf-Astoria roof in New York City. Hotels in Copenhagen, Kenya and China, and across the United States from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., house working rooftop apiaries.

The Brown Palace started its beekeeping program, dubbed “The Royal Bee Initiative,” three years ago, after the city passed an ordinance in 2008 allowing hobbyists to own hives. The hotel bees work the white blossoms of linden trees surrounding the Capitol building downtown, according to resident beekeeper Matt Kentner.

Kentner has been beekeeping for the last 12 years, and approached the hotel with the idea of rooftop bees in order to bring bee concerns to a larger audience.

In one corner of the Brown’s sienna-colored rooftop sit the four staggered hives, resembling dresser drawers outfitted with compartments painted in varying shades of gold. Kentner unlatches the top of a hive and pulls out a frame covered in small groupings of bees hard at work. One solid shake, and he frees them, sending the small swarm up into the air against the backdrop of the surrounding skyscrapers.

“My original motivating factor was what the Brown can do to educate people concerning bees,” he says. Kentner points out that bees are indirectly or directly responsible for a large part of the human food supply — by some counts 1 out of 3 bites every person consumes.

But the recent colony collapse disorder phenomenon has slowly been lowering honey bee numbers. Many people have started raising their own hives, concerned about the disappearing bees — a reason many hotel managers also cite for their beekeeping endeavors.

Colin Farquharson had the idea to put bees on the roof of the St. Ermin’s hotel in London last summer. He was concerned about the disappearance of bees, and said since the hotel put up its hives, many guests have shown a keen interest in beekeeping.

“There’s been a massive groundswell of interest in beehives, particularly in the area we’re in, near Buckingham Palace,” he said. “There are a lot of businesses now, certainly this year, that have bought hives. It’s really taken off.”

Free room and board on rooftops worldwide doesn’t mean the tiny buzzing residents don’t have to earn their keep. As pseudo hotel staff, the bees contribute honey that can be used in cocktails, spa treatments and even as guest souvenirs.

Marcel Pitton, managing director of The Brown Palace, said the honey is like “liquid gold” for the hotel. The honey is used in the restaurant kitchen and as the basis for a lavender honey soap and a local beer, made with the Wynkoop Brewing Company. There’s even “Buzz” the bear, decked out in yellow and black stripes, who recently replaced the Brown’s more traditional-looking stuffed companion.

When people see the products, Pitton said, it starts an important conversation about sustainability and the environment.

Back on the roof, Kentner grasps a contraption that closely resembles the Tin Man’s hat in “The Wizard of Oz,” dousing the “Mile Hive City” with smoke. It calms the bees, he says, which are more apt to sting to defend their product if they aren’t busy or distracted by the cloud.

He pulls out a frame full of honeycomb, waxy and malleable. Each hexagon contains a few drops of an extremely light-colored amber honey. It’s refreshing, slightly woody, with a minty aftertaste. The linden trees are what gives the honey its hint of mint, he says.

The Brown Palace plans to host a bee workshop in the near future to give guests a firsthand look at the bees and teach them how to manage beehives at their own homes.

“I’ve seen a huge increase in local beekeepers in the Denver area, which is fantastic for the bees,” Kentner said. “I wanted to let people know it’s OK to keep bees in their yard, and it’s OK for a hotel to keep bees on their roof. If everyone in the world kept bees, it would be a much different place.”

The hotel’s bees can produce upwards of 150 pounds of harvestable honey every summer while enjoying a private view of downtown Denver. Even in an urban environment, there are always plants that need to be pollinated, Kentner says. And any city roof is a potential urban apiary.

“It blows my mind they do so well up here,” he says. “It’s the coolest place to beekeep there is.”

Kelsey Fowler: 303-954-1211 or kfowler@denverpost.com

Bee-lieve it

Just in the United States, there are: 115,000 to 125,000 beekeepers

2.49 million bee colonies

148 million pounds of honey produced Also in the U.S.: 80 percent of all crop pollination by insects is done by honey bees

1 million colonies are needed to pollinate California’s 740,000 acres of almonds

410 million pounds of honey was consumed in 2010.

Sources: National Honey Board; United States Department of Agriculture

Want to keep bees?Check out these resources for rules and regulations, how-to guides, beginner classes and more:

American Beekeeping Federation: abfnet.org

Colorado State Beekeepers Association: coloradobeekeepers.org

Denver Bee: denverbee.org

Pikes Peak Beekeepers: pikespeakbeekeepers.org