Waikīkī is probably not the first place that comes to mind when you picture a honey harvest. There are hotel towers, beaches, restaurants, traffic, surfboards tucked under arms, and roughly a million places to buy an iced coffee. An apiary several stories above all of this feels considerably less obvious.
But high above Waikīkī, on the rooftop of Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa, thousands of bees are doing what bees have always done. They leave the hive in search of flowers, collect nectar and pollen, return home, and eventually produce something that tastes remarkably connected to the landscape around them.
Recently, we got to see that process up close with Jasmine Joy, founder of Beelieve HawaiŹ»i, as she harvested fresh honey from the resort's rooftop hives. What started as a morning learning about bees eventually became the story behind our newest artisan pop, Coco Mele, created in celebration of Hyatt Regency WaikÄ«kÄ«'s 50th anniversary.
The honey is the ingredient that connects it all.
Joy founded Beelieve HawaiŹ»i 14 years ago, building an organization dedicated not only to bee removal and rescue, but also to pollinator education. That second part matters because HawaiŹ»i's pollinator story is considerably bigger than honeybees. Beelieve HawaiŹ»i uses its work to teach people about the islands' native pollinator species and the role these tiny creatures play in the ecosystems around us.
Standing on a hotel rooftop in the middle of Waikīkī turns out to be a pretty interesting place to have that conversation.
A beehive may stay put, but its residents certainly don't. Joy explained that the bees living at Hyatt Regency WaikÄ«kÄ« forage from substantial nectar sources nearby, including kiawe trees. When those aren't flowering, the search expands considerably. Honeybees can travel miles from their hive looking for food, which means bees departing from WaikÄ«kÄ« can potentially forage toward places as far away as MÄnoa Valley before returning to the rooftop.
Think about what that means for the honey.
What appears to be a jar of honey harvested from a hotel roof is actually the result of thousands upon thousands of tiny flights through Honolulu. Every trip begins with a bee leaving the hive and searching the surrounding landscape for whatever happens to be blooming. Nectar comes back. Pollen comes back. Eventually, honey emerges carrying a flavor shaped by that particular place and moment in time.
āA jar of honey harvested in WaikÄ«kÄ« is really a snapshot of what was blooming across Honolulu when the bees went looking for lunch.ā
That's one of the things that makes truly local honey so interesting. Like wine, coffee, cacao, or any agricultural product strongly influenced by its environment, honey doesn't exist independently of where it comes from. Change the flowers, season, rainfall, or available forage and you can change what's happening inside the hive.
It also makes "local ingredient" feel a little less like marketing language and a lot more literal.
The honey Joy harvested during our visit has another story attached to it. Hyatt Regency Waikīkī is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and honey from its rooftop hives has become part of the property's food and beverage program. It can find its way into dishes, drinks, and other creations served throughout the resort, connecting something happening quietly on the roof with what guests eventually encounter downstairs.
For the anniversary, Hyatt wanted to take that connection somewhere colder.
That's where we came in.
Turning the Harvest Into Coco Mele
Creating an artisan pop around an ingredient like this presents an interesting challenge. When somebody goes through the trouble of maintaining rooftop hives, caring for the bees, harvesting the honey, and giving you something that genuinely reflects its surroundings, the last thing you want to do is bury it beneath a dozen competing flavors.
So Coco Mele was built to give the honey room to matter.
The collaboration transforms honey harvested from the Hyatt's rooftop hives into a frozen flavor created specifically for the resort's milestone year. It's another expression of an ingredient that's already being used throughout the property, but this time through the Pop Culture lens: cold, refreshing, small-batch, and designed for exactly the kind of afternoon Waikīkī produces so reliably.
There is also something wonderfully circular about the whole thing. Bees leave a rooftop in WaikÄ«kÄ«, fly across the surrounding landscape gathering nectar, return to the hive and make honey. That honey is harvested with Beelieve HawaiŹ»i, brought into the kitchen, and eventually becomes an artisan pop served just a few floors below where the entire process began.
You don't get much more local than that.
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Fifty Years in Waikīkī, One Very New Flavor
The collaboration is ultimately a celebration of Hyatt Regency WaikÄ«kÄ«'s 50 years in HawaiŹ»i, but spending time with Joy and watching the harvest gave us a much more interesting way to think about that milestone.
Hotels are usually described by what happens inside them. There are rooms, restaurants, pools, kitchens, bars, ballrooms, and the thousands of people who pass through them every day. The rooftop hives offer another perspective. They connect the property to a living landscape that extends far beyond the building itself.
And that feels particularly appropriate for a flavor made in HawaiŹ»i.
We're always interested in ingredients with a story attached to them, especially when that story involves people doing something unexpected with food grown or produced here. Sometimes that means buying hundreds of pounds of fruit from a local farm because it happens to be perfectly in season. Sometimes it means figuring out what to do with cacao nectar that might otherwise be overlooked. This time, it meant putting on a bee suit and heading to a Waikīkī rooftop.
The result is Coco Mele, made with honey harvested right where you'll eat it.
You'll be able to find Coco Mele at SWIM at Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa as part of the resort's 50th anniversary celebration. When you try one, take a second to think about where that sweetness actually came from. Somewhere beyond the hotel, perhaps in a kiawe tree nearby or among blossoms miles away toward MÄnoa, a bee went looking for nectar.
We just helped with the last few steps.
