Honey from the beehive at Dallas Executive Airport (DEA) is back on the menu at On Rotation Brewery & Kitchen, blocks away from Dallas Love Field (DAL).

The sweet delicacy made quite a splash at the restaurant’s 10^th-anniversary celebration on March 6, featured in its Tienne Honey Saison beer and microgreens salad, specially prepared for the occasion.

“We’ll be adding the honey in place of some of the Belgian candi sugar to dry out the beer and bring in a floral note in the aroma,” said Jacob Sloan, who co-owns the brewery with his wife, Lindsay.

“We’ll be pairing Tienne with a salad that will also incorporate the honey, a microgreens salad with poached pears and dried cherries tossed in herbed ‘local airport honey’ vinaigrette, and finished with shaved asiago cheese,” Sloan added.

A room full of beer enthusiasts and local supporters gathered for the celebratory meal as several rounds of beer traveled around the room with the signature honey ingredient.

“The salad was fantastic, very nuanced in flavor and very layered,” shared Conlee Melvin, an internal auditor at Southwest Airlines. “[The honey] was really what made it for me, the complexity of it, it was great.”

Sloan recalled learning about the airport-produced honey through a tweet from DAL and jumped at the opportunity to use it to create a special beer he called Buzz the Tower, which made the menu last November after several brainstorming sessions and a month-long brewing period.

“It’s really cool to show people where the honey comes from,” Sloan said. “Every time we’ve used the honey in the beer, people always ask questions. People loved it resoundingly.”

“When we moved over here from our previous location, we decided to take on an airport theme, so when you come here, and you get a table, we give you a boarding pass instead of a table number, and it has a city name on it,” he explained.

The hive, which houses up to 50,000 bees, was installed in 2022 in partnership with Alvéole, a beekeeping company that specializes in urban beekeeping for commercial real estate. The company also collects and bottles the honey at the end of each beekeeping season before delivering it to the department for distribution.

With well over 30 pounds of honey produced to date, some 200 jars have been distributed free of charge at community events and to local establishments, like On Rotation Brewery & Kitchen.

“This is such a cool way to share our honey with the community and spread awareness about the vital bees that produce it,” Isaac Ellison, the department’s environmental manager, pointed out.

The beehive was also introduced as part of the department’s biodiversity management initiative, which is part of a larger Sustainability Master Plan to become a sustainable airport system.

DAL made headlines recently when it partnered with a local renewable energy production company to become the first airport in the world to install charging stations that use power created from jet exhaust during takeoff. Read more here.

“This collaboration demonstrates the aviation industry's pivotal role in paving the way for a greener future. We are proud to lead this effort,” Aviation Director Patrick Carreno stated. “As our operations here at Dallas Love Field grow, so does our energy demand. Therefore, we constantly seek innovative ways to conserve and recycle our energy usage.”

The Sustainability Master Plan set a deadline of 2045 to achieve full sustainability.