 everyone and welcome to Hawaii together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Keely E. Akina, your host and president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. As you know, Grassroot is always looking out for ways to manage and change our regulation that the government puts upon us so that we have an optimal environment for a good economy and for living life. Well, we often talk about zoning laws. And when we talk about zoning laws, we're usually talking about housing. But zoning laws cover a lot more than just housing. Today we're going to talk about how they affect one kind of enterprise in particular. You might be surprised. Beekeeping. My guest today is going to share with us information about the importance of beekeeping here in Hawaii, the scope and breadth of beekeeping business on the Big Island, and its national and even international significance. And we're also going to talk about how Hawaii County's zoning regulations could be reformed or changed to help beekeepers have even more of an economic impact and social impact than they already do. So would you please welcome to our program today, Harry Hull. Harry is president of the Big Island Beekeeping Association. Harry, welcome to the program. Aloha. Aloha. Thank you for having me. And you're there in Hilo right now. Correct. Well, what a beautiful place to be doing business and to be living and so forth. How long have you lived on the Big Island? Coming on 10 years now. Well, you are the president of the Big Island Beekeeping Association. Can you tell our viewers just a little bit about that group, how it got started and what its mission is? Well, it actually the organization, the association got started in around 1984, which is just a group of beekeepers basically getting together every once in a while, just to talk story. And that's the way it was for quite some time. About 12, 13 years ago, we actually started to get a little bit more organized. We opened up a teaching apiary and where we invited the public in two Saturdays a month. So if you were interested in beekeeping or just a beginning beekeeper and you wanted to get some information, then you had a place to come and actually get hands on. Interesting. Yeah, we're also very big in education. We give talks to anybody who wants to hear about bees. We do talks at libraries and schools. And every year we host the Hawaiian Honey Challenge. And it's a challenge for all beekeepers throughout the entire state where they can kind of compete. We have two sets of judging. We have a formal judging that's not open to the public. And then we have on the first Friday in November in Hilo, which is a black and white night, we have a public tasting. And members of the public can come, taste the honey, pick their favorite. And then the winners are announced. And it's basically bragging rights for the beekeepers. They also get awards. But the big thing for us is to expose the public to locally raw honey. Most people just know the honey that they see at the store, but aren't familiar and they think that honey tastes the same when it definitely does not. Well, Harry, tell me what is the difference between the kind of honey you might pick up when you go into a grocery store, maybe a national chain, a national brand, versus its raw honey that you're talking about that is grown here in Hawaii and on the big island? What are the differences? The difference is really huge because first, the honey that's brought in in the big chains and things are all blended honey. The companies want to make sure that the color is always the same and the taste is always the same. Unfortunately, you don't really know if you're getting real honey and it's not altered. And with locally produced honey, you get the wide variety of flavors. You know, you have mac nut. It's going to taste a little bit different than from citrus or avocado or lychee. And in some cases, the flavors, depending on the combination of flowers, nectar in those flowers, tastes can range from neutral to coffee to we've had one that people have said tasted like cherry cola, maple, bacon, and just a variety. When we do the public tasting, we have them all lined up and we're separated by colors, light, medium, and dark. And people assume because they see a table full of light honey that they're all going to be the same. And they're absolutely shocked when they start tasting it and none of them taste the same. How about that? Now, Harry, I've just learned something because I'm not a honey connoisseur, well, not yet, but I have to say this is indeed the sweetest program that I've had on air and maybe I'll come over and visit your honey competition. Now, just tell us a little bit about your own background. I assume you are a beekeeper. Yes, yeah, I'm actually involved in the craft. Well, I got involved in the craft about, I would say, about eight years ago. I was living on a farm and the owner of the property had a hive, somebody else was taking care of it. And they, I'm not sure what happened to if they left the island or I don't really recall, but here's a hive that the owner didn't want to deal with because he was kind of afraid of bees. And I volunteered to do that. So I, you know, reading a lot and, you know, watching a lot of YouTube videos. I also benefited from being with, I mean, going to the public learning apiary from the Big Island Beekeepers Association. So I attended some meetings and I basically joined up and, you know, been working with bees and bee buzz since then. Well, how about that? Now, I understand that Hawaii plays an inordinately large role in supplying queen bees throughout the world. In particular, we supply, as you shared with us earlier, about a quarter of all bee queen bees that are sent to Canada. And about, no, I'm sorry, actually more than that Canada, about three fourths. Yeah. And about actually of the United States. Tell me about it. Yes, actually, actually, those numbers are a little different now. We used to supply about 25% of queens to the mainland. Now it's closer to 335%. Which if you think about what bees pollinate, almonds, all sorts of berries, oranges in Florida, for example, you're looking at a multi billion dollar for agriculture on the mainland. Here in Hawaii, it represents approximately 220 million dollars worth of agriculture. And so they're kind of like our silent heroes. One of the advantages we have here on the Big Island is we have no winter. And so we can produce all year round. And so with the massive die offs on the mainland, which has been around 40%, they can't afford to take the time to grow queens, and then wait for workers and for them to go out, they want to hit the ground running. And that's why they purchase queens from us. Canada is closer to 75% of their queens from us. I don't know what the dollar value impact for Canadian agriculture is. But I've heard it if you just think about the various fruits and vegetables that bees pollinate, and you think a third of that comes is due because of the Big Island. Also, it represents, on the Big Island, it represents a little over 10 million dollars in revenue and employment of a little over 70 people. Well, I didn't know that Hawaii played such a significant role in the worldwide market for queen bees. But let me ask you a little bit more specific question. Sure. Are queen bees the main product that Hawaii Island beekeepers sell, or do they also sell honey? And which do they sell more? We do sell honey. Honey sales, the stats from a few years ago, was a little bit over 3 million dollars. I believe it was like 3.2 or 3.3 million dollars in just honey. We also sell honey, I mean, bee products like wax, propolis, and it's used for whole line of candles in cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals use them. So there's a whole thing behind not just honey. And most people don't know that. As a matter of fact, there's some, for example, there is a wax that's made from honey, mostly that's used for board wax on surfboards. And it just goes on and on. Amazing. Now, we wanted to talk with you because of the potential economic impact of making things easier on our producers of queen bees and the honey growers and so forth here. Yeah, the queen bees are obviously the top and really an important industry. One of the things that you need to keep in mind is that we cannot import bees to Hawaii. The only thing we can bring in to Hawaii is bee semen, and but we cannot bring any bees in. It's strictly controlled for the very simple reason. We don't have Africanized bees here in the state, and we definitely don't want them, because if we ever got Africanized bees, industry would be destroyed. Okay, so that's not the way to go to increase the industry output. But there is a proposal that you have before the legislature now in this session. It's bill 44. And that would help the beekeepers in your industry to... Yes, yes. Tell us a little bit about that, and in particular, about changing the zoning laws a bit to make a real difference in terms of our productivity for beekeepers. Well, to start off with the current law is that in the past, and nowadays no one knows exactly how or why it happened, but that's now irrelevant, and the bakeries got put into, they were lumped in with cows and pigs. And with pickeries, you can't have them 1,000 feet from a major roadway. The problem is, major roadway is not defined in the legislation. There was a queen breeder on the conus side that was forced to move his entire operation because his bees were about 980 feet from the roadway. And at that time, they determined that any road that's an egress to a property can be considered a major roadway. So that was a major, major problem. There's a lot of farms that on ad land that cannot keep bees because of that. You've got a lot of stretches of property that might be many, many acres, but if they're long and narrow and you have a road on one side, a road on the other side, you might not be able to have any bees there. The other problem was, if you look at the animal section, that they classified bees as pets, and there it's 75 feet. So what are they? And just as a side note, honey is actually classified as a specialty crop by the USDA. So that's a problem. People who have backyard beekeepers, for example, technically are not legally allowed to because that's residential. And we've got many, many, I can't tell you how many people have reached out, I mean, reached out to us and told us, you know, I've got this avocado tree or I've got this citrus tree and it's like doesn't produce. And hey, I found out, you know, my neighbor is, you know, put a hive in and now my trees are blown up. So what we wanted to do is make sure that beekeepers can be beekeepers, regardless of what the zoning is. So this bill removes apiaries from all zoning. So, so if you have a building in downtown Hilo, when you want to put a roof garden on top, you could have a hive in your garden on your rooftop. Currently, you cannot. And so that's why it's, it's kind of important. It's important that we keep genetics. It's important that we be that we keep our own bees healthy. We lost about 35 to 40% of our bees. And when when they had the Leilani eruption, and we lost about 30, I believe they're like 3,800 acres of vegetation. So it's resources for bees. And we also lost a lot of bees. Your analysis of the zoning regulations that apply to bees and beekeepers is fascinating. Because a lot of zoning regulations are just difficult to understand. But the story you're telling tells us that the zoning regulations may have made sense at one time, but definitely need to be revised. How about counties? How do they regulate this outside of the Big Island and as well across the United States and Canada? Well, I'll give you an example. And one of the, I mean, this whole thing started with one of our members was actually one of the board members at the time that was forced to have his hive removed because a neighbor across the street was complaining. He was just a problem neighbor. He had nothing to do because two houses down from him, that person had two hives and that was fine. And he was forced to move his hives. When we started looking into this, we were quite shocked how that, for example, in San Francisco, that has small lots, densely populated, has no regulations. You could have hives anywhere you want and as many as can be supported by the local vegetation. You can have hives in Manhattan, you can have hives in LA, but you can't have hives in Hilo. That made no sense to me at all into our organization. So we started this whole thing about let's look into this. Some have regulations regarding the size of lots. Others have no regulations as far as sizes of lots or how many you could have. Some states have actual bee inspectors that come out and they're very pro beekeepers and they try to match you with mentors or organizations that can help out. Well, how do you actually transport your products to Canada and the mainland through the mail? Yes, through the mail. For FedEx and tell me what are the regulations locally and internationally even regarding the transport? Well, we have, I mean, they are shipped from here mostly by US mail. I'm not sure if they do FedEx, but they're live. They're in a special container and there's a queen and there are some small bees in there. They're the queen's attendants that go with them. And it's similar to how we ship chickens and other live animals. Now, what about beekeepers who want to sell some of their honeys at farmer's markets or yes stores? Are there any county or state regulations that make it more? There's no, actually, no, there really isn't the there are state regulations in regards to labeling. There's certain things that you're required to put on the label. And that's really it. And as far as a, you know, you only need to have like a certified processing if you're doing more than 500 gallons a year. But the great majority of people don't reach that, especially the smaller producers. A lot of them sell at farmer's markets, roadside stands, and so some sell online. And a lot of those people, small businesses, I mean, they're not going to make a lot of money, but, you know, they make enough money to pay a bill or two, you know, buy, you know, kids, school supplies, and so on. So one of the goals was if we are able to bring in where we eliminate zoning, then all these people will be in compliance. And all right, that's really important. The other thing to understand that a beehive can be on Agland. The bee can travel anywhere from up to three to five miles from their hide to forage. So it has no idea what zone it's going to go to or from. And so you can have a hide in one place, and it can be foraging in a residential area. So it can forage in a residential area, but the place that forages can't have a bee there, beekeeper there, which again makes no sense. And so that was one of the things that we did. To play some of the rules and stuff, we came down to, we negotiated down to, you can have a hide up to 25 feet from the property line, or 15 feet if you have a flyover barrier. And that's basically it. We were working with a working group to go through this, and it was mostly a bunch of beekeepers from hobbyists to commercial to queen readers. We also had, obviously Ashley Kirkowitz was leading our council member, and we had people from the state health department, we had local ag department planning corporate council. So we brought all these people into potential stakeholders. They kind of really go through this. We didn't want to make the same mistake that was made, you know, decades ago, where they can just throw something out there, or have, okay, you want a residential, then fine, we'll just do one bill for residential and exclude everyone else. So, Harry, I thought that was, I'm sure. You've worked very hard on this, and with respect to bill 144, have you received any pushback? And what are your responses to those who may have? Well, we haven't really received any pushbacks directly. There was just a lot of questions about, you know, what happens, you know, if, you know, I have a problem, and, you know, who can I go to? And it's spelled out in the bill. One of the things also that is important to note, part of the bill is best practice. And it's kind of an industry known. And if you follow the best practices, you know, you're really not going to have an issue. If you communicate with your neighbors, you're not going to have an issue. You know, there's little things in the best practice, have a water supply there, so the bees don't travel to the neighbor's pool or something like that. You know, in order not to confuse the bees, don't have, you know, like your porch light on at night, you know, close to your hive. A lot of little things like that that are best practice, but also common sense. Harry, what would you say the future of your industry is here in Hawaii, and how easily could people get involved in that? Well, they can easily get involved if they're really, you know, interested in it. The investment is minimal, but excuse me. And you don't have to learn a lot. You know, if you're really interested, you should find a local bee organization club association, or find a local beekeeper and, you know, for potential mentoring. And yes, most people, you know, might be interested in like one or two hives. They're not interested in more hives because, you know, they don't want another job. And that's really understandable. Well, I have to tell you, very proud of you and your colleagues who are standing up to fight for the right to actually make a living and to build an economy here in Hawaii. It's an important thing you do. And as I pointed out earlier, I'm just amazed at the, the role that the Hawaii beekeeping industry plays globally. And this is something that we should actually be very proud of, and something we should actually be expanding. So I wish there's a little bit on bill 144. What do the prospects look like in this legislative session? Well, then they look pretty good. I mean, it went through the first committee. And now it's in the hands of planning. They're going to review it and come back with comments. I can't see them having any real comments since they were part of the working group. So it's going to come back to back to the legislative group. And then there's really no change. It's going to go to the full council. And hopefully, there's going to be one reading on the Hilo side, one reading on the Kona side. And hopefully, you know, by within the next, you know, five, maybe six months, you know, it'll be passed. Well, assuming that it will pass it, sign it. I've got a quick question before you leave today. Yes. What are you and the Big Island Beekeeping Association members learned about politics in the adventure of trying to defend your business? What have you learned? Quite a bit. We were never, you know, we'd never have never been involved in anything like this. And so we've learned a lot about, you know, mostly negotiations from different departments. At times it has been frustrating because you're dealing with non beekeepers or people that have no knowledge of bees and don't realize the impact. We've talked about, you know, we have talked about, you know, the global effect from bees here. One thing that's not really mentioned too much is food security within our own islands. And that's why it's another thing to keep in mind. It's really important to have bees. Whether you're just one hive backyard beekeepers is almost just as important as the big commercial guys. Terrific. Well, Harry, thank you so much for all you're doing. And I want to wish you the very best. Thank you for being on the program today. Right. Sure. Thank you very much. And they do appreciate the opportunity to be here. Well, everyone, my guest today has been Harry Hall, president of the Big Island Beekeeping Association. And what a delightful conversation this has been. I hope you've learned something. I certainly have. And it has been indeed a sweet program. I'm Kay Lee Akina, president of the Grassroot Institute. You've been watching Hawaii together on Think Tech Hawaii until next time. Aloha. We want to announce that Think Tech Hawaii is moving into a new phase and will not be producing regular talk shows after April 30. We will retain our website and YouTube channel and will accept new content on an ad hoc basis. We are also developing a legacy archive program to provide continuing public access to our content. If you can help us cover the costs of the transition and the development of our legacy archive program, please make a donation on thinktechaway.com. Thanks so much. Aloha.