In 2008, Mark and Leah Damon, owners of Maui Bees Incorporated in Kula, combined their shared passion for bees and wholesome organically grown food to create a joint farming venture, including a farm stand to offer their grown-on-Maui products. The Damons’ commitment to their honey is second to none. They have always insisted on keeping it pure and unfiltered by using a 100 percent cold process to ensure the honey stays below room temperature. Their seasonal honey is produced by worker bees that head out daily onto the slopes of Haleakala to forage for nectar and pollen.
“Twice a year we harvest our honey to produce two distinctive honey varieties,” Mark noted. “In the summer months, May-October, we gather nectar and pollen from abundant forests of Wilelaiki that grow on the leeward side of Haleakala. This timeline produces a mild amber honey. In the wintertime, December-April, the bees frequent tall stands of Eucalyptus that yield a deeper darker honey with mellow caramel undertones.”
Hidden deep inside every beehive, the sole queen bee lays about 2,000 eggs per day. Sometimes there are as many as 60,000 worker bees in a single hive. The queen can live from two to five years and in that time produce over a million workers. Nevertheless, prolific as they are, bees face a range of complex and interacting hazards.
Mark explained, “Today, beekeeping is confronted with the disappearance of bees due to a variety of threats including habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation; and the widespread use of pesticides in subsidized intensive farming. Beekeepers have become bee farmers. Without their work, the bee, despite its prodigious life force, may disappear from our communities through its sensitivity to toxins. The bee is a true natural indicator of the environment’s health.”
Recently, the Damons’ added a Bee Museum, an educational component of their farm. Visitors can watch bees safely behind the glass walls of two observation hives and learn all about the inner workings of a living bee-hive. The farm offers structured educational programs and regenerative agriculture tours for guests who want a more in-depth educational experience.
Our observation hives teach about pollination, bee jobs, and what is in the hive. Our compost and garden studies explain regenerative farming practices and how soil fertility produces our beautiful food.
Nisei Veterans Memorial Center recently welcomed former Governor George Ariyoshi, Hawaii’s longest-serving governor, to its ‘Afternoon with the Author’ Zoom series. In Ariyoshi’s newest book, Hawaii’s Future, he talks about leadership on Maui, the importance of values, and how things we do now will have a great impact on the future. An American lawyer and politician, Ariyoshi served as the third governor of Hawaii from 1974 to 1986. He is the first American of Asian descent to serve as governor in any U.S. state.
Concerned about Hawaii’s future, Ariyoshi has spent many years pondering his latest book. It is an insightful guide for today’s leaders and residents to examine Hawaii’s past while asking readers to discover ways to create a better Hawaii. “There are many issues of concern,” he said. “For example, the oceans and our land need to be taken care of. Stewardship is key. The philosophy of agriculture and education are vital now. Plus, it is crucial to engage the community. Setting policies alone does not make a community good, it is reaching out and working with the people.”
As a three-term governor of the State of Hawaii, Ariyoshi set in motion a series of wide-ranging policies that became his legacy. He noted, “During my 13 years as Hawaii’s chief executive, I adopted responsible fiscal strategies, maintained progressive trade relations and steady tourism growth, optimized the development of ocean resources, worked on land preservation and conservation, and strengthened Hawaii’s presence in the Pacific”.
A firm believer in planning, Ariyoshi said his concerns for Hawaii have grown more urgent than ever. “When I was in office, state planning was an important part of the government agenda,” he emphasized. “It is important to pay attention now and ask the question, What about Hawaii’s future? I think we need to look ahead at what needs to be done. We must also consider climate change and homelessness issues in order for us to have a good Hawaii. Every person in the community should work together, participate and be useful to make our state great for our future generations.”
We are never too young or too old to care, participate, and contribute to our community.
In October 2020, STEMworks™ partnered with the Maui Nui Botanical Garden to bring our students a STEMworks Solutions engineering design challenge called “Pots that Rot”. This design challenge asked students to engineer an affordable, biodegradable pot with locally available materials that could replace the plastic pots that Maui Nui Botanical Garden (MNBG) currently uses in their nursery.
The team, “Sus-Attainable” won first place in the STEMworks Solutions Challenge with their ingenious design for a compostable pot that would be made from recycled paper and rice paste. As a prize for winning that competition, STEMworks, in partnership with Kupu and the Kōkua Hawaii Foundation, advanced team Sus-Attainable to the Hawaii Youth Sustainability Challenge where they could bring their compostable pots to life.
Sus-Attainable team members, Samuel Kim, Zitao Li, and Andy Au, received funding, mentorship, and training to support their innovative and grassroots environmental solution to plastic pots. Over a period of six months, this team employed the engineering design process to create several iterations of their pots. “For our first prototype, we plastered wet shreds of recycled paper over plastic pots,” Li explained. “Then, we evolved to filling pot molds, made with a 3D printer, using a blended paste of paper, cooked rice, and water. We are proud of the resulting increase in strength and hope to increase the water resistance in our pots.”
Kim added, “My favorite part of the challenge was working as a team towards a common goal, learning how sustainability affects every part of our lives. This new appreciation motivated us to use recycled paper as the primary ingredient in our pots to help divert waste from the waste stream. We hope that one day our pots will be sold as a sustainable alternative to the plastic pots in nurseries around Hawaii.”
“I am incredibly proud of our Pots that Rot STEMworks Solutions winners,” said Katie Taladay, STEMworks Program Manager. “Since October, they have invested a great deal of work and perseverance to bring their winning design to life using the Engineering Design Process that we teach through our STEMworks programs. I was most excited to see that they were able to use their engineering design skills for good, to produce a necessary and sustainable product for the MNBG.”
I am saving one of our sustainable pots for my grandma, who loves to garden!
There are many ways to invest in the future of energy in Hawaii. It will take creativity and hard work from project developers; the community, including indigenous groups; regulators; and energy service providers to come up with projects that are acceptable for all concerned. Building trust and respect between stakeholders within the context of equitable community development will be a key metric of success. Any viable project will require substantial amounts of financial capital and an adequate return on investment. The skill development and job creation that results must take us towards a new energy economy. Every community faces similar challenges – how can we invest in people while designing energy projects that are financially viable, resilient, and enhance job skills?
Join us for the 8th Annual Hawaii Energy Conference as we explore how to invest with knowledge and respect in Hawaii.
Every year the Rotary Clubs in Hawaii have held ‘Rotarians-at-Work Day’ to coincide with the week of Earth Day. This year, Maui Rotarians, alongside community partners and volunteers, joined to pick up plastics and trash throughout the island. “Our goal was to pick up trash on the beaches, the shorelines, in parks and on trails,” said Dennis Bagshaw, President of Rotary Club Kihei Wailea. “We hope to continue to protect Maui’s natural beauty, marine life, and the health of residents and visitors from the damages of plastic pollution. Plastics threaten Hawaii’s water quality, vulnerable marine ecosystems and public spaces around the island.”
Eight Maui Rotary clubs engaged in the clean-up as part of the statewide Ridge-to Reef Clean-Up Day event. The plan was for Rotarians to partner and clean microplastics (pieces smaller than 5mm in size) from different areas around the island. For example, the Wailuku Rotary Club did a clean-up of the area adjacent to the Nisei Veterans Center, and the other clubs did their clean-ups.
Mariko Higashi, Assistant Governor Maui Coastal Rotary Clubs, explained, “Much of the litter we find on the beaches, trails and public spaces are plastic. Plastic of any size, particularly microplastic, is a health concern to both humans and animals alike. By not only collecting but also classifying the collected litter, we can better understand the source of the pollution, where the pollution is concentrated on our islands, and how we can best tackle this problem. The data will help advocate for policy and regulatory changes as has been done in the past such as with the banning of single use plastic bags at stores on Maui in 2011, and of smoking at beaches in Hawaii in 2015.”
Higashi added, “While clean-ups can help, it is also clear that we cannot recycle or clean-up our way out of the plastic pollution crisis. It will take sustained changes in our behavior, the products we purchase and the food we eat, to begin to correct this problem. The good news is we still have a chance to fix these problems, as we continue to explore ways to reduce or replace the plastic from our everyday lives.”
The Rotary motto, ‘Service Above Self’ keeps Maui club members involved in numerous projects throughout the year. Protecting the environment and growing the local economy are one of many areas of Rotary’s focus.
Dennis Bagshaw, President of Rotary Club Kihei Wailea
