 ThinkTek Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. It's Monday. It's Tuesday. And it's 11 a.m. And you know what that means. It's young talents making way time. I'm Andrea Gabrieli. I'm your host. And this is the show where we want to talk about things that matters to Hawaii that are important for our people and our future. We want to do this with extraordinary guests, the students of our schools across the islands. And as I understand today, we're going to talk about bees and honey bees. And here today, welcome, this is Aubrey Davis from Sacred Hearts Academy. Welcome, Aubrey. Nice to have you here. It's great to be here. And as I understand, we also have someone else in our studio today hiding. And so we have the campus minister of Sacred Hearts Academy, Sister Catherine Miller. Hi, sister. Nice to have you here as well. So please raise your hands. Anybody who likes honey. Me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So tell us more about Aubrey. So which grade are you in? I'm a 10th grader. 10th grader, yeah. So let's begin our conversation today by having you telling us something about what you're doing at Sacred Hearts Academy as well as why you got interested in bees and why you started the science projects regarding honey and honey bees as well. So I am a student. That's my current profession. So one of my teachers, Miss Kinga Voitas, she is the social studies global issues women's studies teacher at Sacred Hearts and she came up to me one day asking me if I wanted to participate in this competition called Global Natural History Day. And I was excited. I do all types of things like that because I love school and I love my education. So I was like, why not, right? And so Global Natural History was based on a specific you pick a global issue and you research it with a partner. But I ended up doing it solo. I took a trip to China. Is this competition a Hawaii competition? Yes. So this was Global Natural History Day. It was their second year in Hawaii. They do not have it on the mainland. They only have it here. It's only local, yeah. Yes, but they did want to expand it nationally. But unfortunately the program is not going to be continued this year. But Mr. Christopher Choi, he's starting his own program called Lab, Learning Across Borders. And that is just like GNHD. It's the same concept, but it's his own type of organization now, which I will be participating in again this year. And it's going to be held in Vietnam. Oh wow. So you get to travel. You get to do research. You got to do what you enjoy. And so let's jump into more what's like your future plans as well. After you said you are a 10th grader, after you will graduate with high school, what would you like to do? Would you like to continue staying in the sciences, carrying on this research as well? So tell us more about, we're curious. We are at Think Tech here. We're curious about your future and your great ideas and success. Most definitely. I do have two years left, but I'm pretty set on going to the mainland and I will be studying something in the sciences. So sort of biology, either it be medical or if I do environmental science with bees. But if I do go to the mainland, I kind of want to stay more on the west coast. Are you coming back? I will come back. Good, because we need you here. I love Hawaii. It's my home. Like I've been here forever and I can't, I mean I will go to the mainland for college, but I feel like I wouldn't be able to live there. Like I'm always going to have to find my way back, you know, because it's my home. Yes. And bees in Hawaii. Yes. So I'm curious. Maybe let's have our first slide up so we can see something more. Oh, okay, so these are our friends, right? Yes, of course. So you may not, a lot of people don't think like, oh they think bees, they think they sting me. They try to intentionally harm me, but it's totally not true. Like bees, their stingers are their defensive mechanisms and whenever they feel threatened, that's when they sting. But then we always relate stinging to bees and we never relate their importance because they have, due to their like pollination processes that they do, because they pollinate like bees, fun fact, they're responsible for 35% of our world's agricultural crop production. So they're responsible for pollinating fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, coffee beans. Coffee beans as well, which we have on the western coast of the big island all the coffee farms and everything. So that's the thing like, is in $212 million, is it million or is it billion? I think it's million, I'm pretty sure. Million dollars a year off of bee pollination and Hawaii's proudest aspect is queen bee production. So Hawaii is titled as the place where they produce queen bees and that's really, really important because a queen bee is the leader of a hive, right? So the hive basically, what kind of bees do you have? So there is the queen and then there are, I assume as the queen, I mean the queen doesn't do all the job producing honey as well. So what kind of other, how is the hive, how is it organized? What happens in there? So you have the queen and the queen is like the top and you have drones and you have worker bees. And these are the ones that deal with all like honey production, like they kind of help everything like run smoothly in the hive and the drones are usually, which are usually male, they're the ones that mate with the queen and that's how you produce more bees. And more bees. Yes, so yeah. And so the workers basically, how do they produce honey? They go out and so they look for flowers, they choose the sweet ones and how does it actually, they get the nectar? So when you, they go out and they get the nectar and then they just come back in and they do like their process of like honey production and that's how, and they leave it, like you know when you see honeybee hive and you think honeybee combs and that's where they store all like their honey, like if you watch the bee movie, it's totally accurate the bee movie, really. So let's have our second slide up so we can see. So this is what basically, this looks like a field. We have some flowers here and we mentioned about the importance of bees for pollination purposes. So the bees are the main factors that, you know, pollinate flowers as we said and guarantee food productions as well. What would happen if there were no more bees, for example? So I want to just touch up on the like, the thing that bees are not the only pollinators. I mean there are like butterflies, moths, you know, rodents, those type of things and a lot of people would ask the question like, hey, if bees disappeared, someone else is going to pick up the slack. Another pollinator will pick up the slack but bees are like the most, they contribute most to... Well that's why they are important then because they contribute the most. Yes, so that's why. We don't want to neglect the fact that there are other pollinators out there but bees are just responsible. They take a main role in the pollination processes that occur throughout the world. Like the U.S. makes $24 billion off of bee pollination and of that $24 billion, bees are responsible for 15. So, you know, if you do the math, 15 over 24, that's a great portion, that's more than half that bees are responsible for. And we can think, oh, yeah, sure, butterflies. If bees are gone, butterflies would pick up the slack but will they really? Because when you think about it, bees, like, when they're gone, they won't, we won't have honey. That's a major thing, right? Honey is also good for a health, health purposes as well. It's some sort of natural antibiotics that's important, yeah. That's why we use it in cough medicines or you use it in, like, hair care products because it helps your scalp. It's just a natural remedy to, like, soothe your throat if you're, like, sick. And it's, like, bees are responsible for the production of honey, but they're also responsible for, as I said, like fruits and vegetables and they pollinate cotton fibers, too. And cotton's one of the main clothing items that we use in the clothing industry. So we can actually make a point here and say that bees are actually worth, if not even billions of dollars because all these industries are related to, you know, their health, basically. So it's important to keep them healthy. Exactly, like, for example, the dairy industry, right? We get dairy from, you know, cows. Cows, for example, right? They produce milk. And cows eat, like, 100 pounds of food a day and it's mainly only alfalfa hay and alfalfa hay is pollinated by bees. When you think about it, if no bees, no alfalfa hay, how are cows going to eat 100 pounds a day? Right. We mentioned about, so the importance of bees, the importance of bees in Hawaii and for our economy as well, what's, maybe we have a slide, I believe, where we're showing a trend that there is a figure that we brought which we're basically, where we're basically showing, oh, I think here it is, the number of colonies in the United States basically across from 1975-2010. I see a sharp decline. Oh, most definitely, like, I think it's because, like, a lot of the time we don't technically think about bees because they're like these two little centimeter insects that just seem to buzz and sting all the time, but they actually have a greater importance that I didn't even know until I actually researched about it and it tells you that at this current rate, by the year 2035, we might not even have any bees left. So, your projects, your science projects at Sacred Hearts Academy brought you to China as well for an award that you won and also you were mentioning something about what we can do, actually, to prevent this decline and try and recovery the populations of bees. What are some of the remedies that people can, you know, do to try and sort of change this trend line which we had a look at? So, there are a lot of things that we can do or there's also a lot of things that are being done. So, there's a lot of countries have partaken in a bee conservation project of some sort, like North America has this North American pollinator protection campaign type of thing. And what I found really interesting and what I really liked because I feel like that's something that is really easy and that we can incorporate in both public and private schools here on the island is Southern Oregon University and Beesity USA launched a program in April of 2015 called, it's like a Bee Campus USA program where they have like they practice like sustainable farming and planting like more a variety of plants on like college campuses that will contribute to bringing bees back to the environment because a lot of the... Back to places where maybe they were there but then they'd gone, yeah, they went, yeah. Yes, because there has been studies shown that once they did plant like a diverse amount of crops in a certain area, the bee population like it returned, like bees came back. So, they like, if I understand correctly they like a variety of crops to choose from so they can choose different flowers, different plants. So, variety is important. Variety is important. And that's what I feel like because, well, what I think is that if we have public and private schools maybe donate some sort of like area or dedicate some sort of area where we can, well, as you generically say, plant more gardens, right? If you plant different types of plants somewhere it will... It will... Bring them back. Yeah, it will contribute to bringing the bee population back to an area that they may couldn't believe they could live in because it wasn't as sustainable as it was before. Because we know that there's... We live in a state where we're building more buildings and things are becoming more industrialized but we have to also realize the importance of our agriculture. Right. And this is what we're learning from Audrey Davis about bees here at Finta Kowai and now it's time to go and get some honey and we're gonna take a break and we're gonna be back soon. That's you. I want to know will you watch my show? I hope you do. It's on Tuesdays at one o'clock and it's out of the comfort zone and I'll be your host, R.E.B. Kelly. See you there. We're back. We're live. We're here. This is Finta Kowai Young Talents Making Way Daily Dose of Honey Today. And we have here today Aubrey Davis who is talking about her research as a student at Sacred Hearts Academy regarding honey production and bees. And so we talked about the importance economically of bees. So the importance of pollinations for cots, for various crops. We mentioned the coffee on the in Kona. But we also said that the population of bees around the world as well as in Hawaii is declining. Your research, your project, science project in high school brought you to China. Can you tell us something? So how was that? You know, traveling for research stories. What experience as well did you bring back from your trip to China? What did you learn? So going to China was my first time outside the country. So my parents were a little worried about sending me away, but I was with my teacher and it was really great because I did have other students from Hawaii who did come with me. But when I did go there, I also met other students from Hong Kong, like different parts of China who were centered in China. Why China? Well, Mr. Bering who founded or is responsible for supporting financially GNHD I think is like its home base is in China. So they had the competition in different areas of China every year. So I think it was, they just wanted it to be centered in China. Right. But you were also mentioning that they had a serious problems with the population decline extreme at the point where no more bees were there in a region. Is that where you went? I went to Chongqing, so I did not go to Sichuan, the Sichuan province. They lost other bees already and a lot of the farmers had to result to hand pollination. And hand pollination is a really, really time-consuming process. You have to go to every single flower every single, yeah. But it might be difficult though because like 10 to 20 years from now China is experiencing like people are becoming less farmers and moving to the city to find jobs and with less farmers then who's going to be able to continue the hand pollination process and try to keep our plants from disappearing. And all these people moving to industry and doing jobs in the city still have to eat somehow. Exactly. So your trip you went there and this was a company so you won the competition in Hawaii and then with the students as well you went to China to basically continue the competition. So how was this experience then? It was really great partially because well mainly because I did get to go to different country to continue and present about my research that I did which is kind of amazing to actually research and go somewhere else to talk about it. Especially when you come from... We're seeing some pictures here. Can you make some comments? So that's my... I constructed a honeybee. It looks like a hive, yeah? Yeah, a honeybee hive. It has like the different cones and it's rotating actually so it's a rotating exhibit. It rotates and people can... So people don't need to go around and to read it. It turns... So when I did present about my issue about bees I was able to turn my display and focus the judge's attention on a specific type of honeycomb to focus on. So this was in China. You learned about this... What really happens is these are not our gun basically. If they're not present anymore. How is the situation with the population as well as hives, the number of hives here in the state of Hawaii? So Hawaii, luckily we don't experience or we don't have as much of a problem as other places do. Like yes, we do have problems but we also help because we have a pretty sustainable population of bees here. We ship our hives to California for example. Because California, like bees pollinate nuts, right? California heavily depends on almond crop production. Especially during this month, February and March. So from Hawaii we ship a lot of our beehives, commercial beekeeping to California to help sustain their almond crop production. And we bring them back afterwards. Of course. We need to. So bees are particularly important for people, basically for food production and economy. If I were to basically grow a garden here in Hawaii and try to plant more plants, more flowers that bees would enjoy. They would attract bees to my garden and bring them there. What kind of plants would I... So you mentioned variety before. Is that right? So what kind of... It can technically be anything I believe because as long as you have diversity like if it's a plant that has like nectar and it's really, really sweet bees are going to be attracted to it no matter what. No matter if it's a sunflower or if it's Plumerias or whatever type of agriculture that we have here or that's available as long as they're all different in some sort of way then bees will come and be attracted to it. A main problem is monoculture farms. So when we plant one of the same type of crop bees won't want to come because they're so used to. It's like eating the same thing every day. If you eat a hamburger every single day you eventually get sick of it. Right? You want hamburgers and pizza and Kalupe. And peach and vegetables as well. Exactly. Because like us, bees need nutrients too and a lot of it is when they suffer from malnutrition that's one way that their population declines. Aubrey, thank you for your time here. Thank you for coming over. The last question that I would like to ask you, can you summarize for our viewers what we said basically the importance of bees and so why here in Hawaii we care about bees and we want them to thrive and we want growing population. So Hawaii's economy is mainly based on the macadamia industry and our growing coffee industry which is starting to compete with other countries all the way up there. We heavily depend on macadamia and coffee. Those are our two crops that we produce solely here and bees are responsible for pollinating both of those things. They pollinate the macadamia nuts and they pollinate the coffee beans. The Kona coffee. Exactly. And without bees yes, there are other pollinators but they are not as I'm not going to say as important because they are but they aren't as responsible for the job that bees do because bees have done it so efficiently all these years. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, Aubrey. Thank you for being here. You've been watching Pink Tech Hawaii Young Talents Making Way. I'm Andrea Gabrieli. I'm your host. It's been a pleasure today on next Tuesday not Monday as I said at the beginning at 11 a.m. Thank you. Aloha.