 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome to another episode of Likeable Science here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host Ethan Allen. Likeable Science, as you all know, is all about how science is a vital and interesting part of all of our lives. It's not something done by scientists, by scientists, for scientists. It's something done by each of us every day for our own benefit, for the benefit of others. We're going to talk today about an interesting area that people might not think of as science, but it has a lot of science in it. We're going to talk about bees. And with me today is Darren Olson, a beekeeper. Welcome, Darren. Aloha, thank you. Nice to see you. Darren comes by his beekeeping skills, honestly, and heredically, I guess. His family has been keeping bees for generations upon generations, large guys back in Norway. Yes. Excellent, excellent. But he has chosen a much more gentle climate to raise the bees in. So, we tend to think of bees, a lot of people tend to think of bees as bees, right? But there are actually lots of different kinds of bees, right? So can you maybe give us, without going into too much detail, because there are really a lot of kinds of bees, but some of the general big groups. So some of the definitions I have to start off with are things like wasps and hornets, things that we think of, of like yellow jackets, bald-faced hornets, paper wasps. Those are insects that look like bees to 90% of Americans, but they sting repeatedly. They're able to inject venom into people a bunch of times and still live and fly away. That's their defense mechanism. Then there's honey bees, the things that most beekeepers care the most about because we get a lot of honey from those bees. So those are Italian and Carniolan is the main categories of honey bees that we care about. Then there's a Hawaiian bee that makes honey. It was brought over to Hawaii about 200-ish years ago and is now only found in Hawaii. So that bee also makes honey, but at a slower amount over time and is a lot more aggressive, more likely to sting the beekeeper. So you don't like them? I have to tend them. That's my kuleana or responsibility to take care of them because we have one slide of me bringing a swarm out from an agriculture park in this case and this is the day of when we were catching a swarm. They were in somebody's cupboard. They were there by choice because they were out of the rain, but they prefer to be in a safe covered area that's away from that and here we are catching those swarms of bees so that we can preserve our uniqueness to Hawaii that's now lost in Europe and in mainland. So this Hawaiian honey bee is a separate species of bee now? We're calling it a separate species but could mate with honey bees, but we prefer not to because we want the traits to be unique. Their venom is very valuable versus the honey bee's venom which is less valuable. And then we have hopefully our topic today, Hawaiian Endemic Solitary Bees. So species of bees that are usually stingless that have been here in Hawaii Endemic, 40 to 50,000 years of being here in Hawaii. So these are bees that presumably one or two of them showed up. We got blown over here by a swarm eons and eons ago. Or we're with the voyaging travelers on some means and came here as part of the voyaging spirit of their own looking for more prospects of land. So now these bees don't make honey, right? So in general, no. We categorize them by size and these bees are unique and specific. Honey bees make a lot of honey. Here in Hawaii, a healthy honeybee hive can make 300 pounds of honey for a beekeeper to take and remove. And they still have food left over. An endemic yellow-face Hawaiian bee only eats food and then flies to its next location and has burnt up all the calories that it consumed in its flight to get to its next location and then needs to eat and then has enough energy to fly to its next location. And so it is dependent on our land here in Hawaii 100% for its food in order to go from place to place. At the same time, the plants that these bees deal with, some of them certainly over evolutionary times have become more or less dependent upon these bees, right? So why do you care about these endemic endangered species of Hawaiian bees? For example, orchids that are endemic to Hawaii only pollinate from these specific Hawaiian solitary bees. We'll lose these, for example, 14 species of orchids if these seven endemic Hawaiian bees die off because they're going to be no longer endangered but then become extinct. Then those orchids will also become extinct. Right, because orchids are a very classic case of this sort of co-revolution of pollinators and plants and the plants have evolved to make themselves more attractive to the pollinators and the pollinators focus more and more narrowly on those plants and it's led to sort of an evolutionary spiral where they have become mutually dependent. Exactly. Yeah, so there's a very good reason why. So in general, what are the big threats to these bees then? So without saying any company's names, the agrochemical companies that spray poisons on our land and have decimated land use into a single use item has stopped these Hawaiian bees from being able to jump from place to place, eat food and then be able to jump to their next place. So their area used to be the island of Oahu and they knew how to find and forge enough food, which there's plenty of food for all bees here in Hawaii. We do need more honey bees to sustain our agriculture at a better commercial level and I mean food that we normally consider food versus how we have just a commercial industry that is making huge sections of land single use. Which are then unsuitable for these bees. For these bees. So the bees get, their habitat gets fragmented and it's so large that they can't cross over these barriers. So this island becomes actually set of smaller islands for them and they're confined to these smaller smaller pockets. Yes. Plus I'd imagine some of the chemicals that are being sprayed there probably aren't the best things for these bees. So that's also destroying them. So they're more susceptible when they weren't previously for the past 40,000 years to viruses, for example. These chemicals are destroying their nervous system, their brains in a way that is making them lose information. What they used to do naturally, they're no longer able to do. So what do you mean here? Expand effort? So there's a few chemicals like neonicotoids. So this is a chemical that they're spraying on seeds before they get sold to you at Home Depot or Lowe's. So then a person buys those seeds not knowing what's on them, plants them in their garden, bees, any bees, bumblebees, Hawaiian bees, honeybees. They go and eat from those plants, nectar, pollen. They take that into them. But these chemicals add up in their bodies. So then they die. OK. Certainly a grim future. There's other chemicals that they just spray on crops. But we live on an island. We don't have a separate set of air for just agriculture. We breathe the same air, and we walk on the same soil. So those chemicals build up on the soil, and it goes into our normal breathing air. So the bees also breathe the same air we do. Sure. What is the Hawaiian saying? Haiva'a, haimoku, haimoku, haiva'a, right? The canoe is the island. The island is the canoe, right? Yeah, we're all in this together. And this is what these bees are sort of a good example of, right, is that everything really is connected to everything else here. And you can see it very clearly on your island. So they're the indicator for me. So I know I take care of honeybees. And this is kind of my menagerie. I'm also able to take care of these bees. If I have enough time, money, and energy, I'm coming up with ways to, I know there isn't going to be anyone else who can solve this problem. I'm a team of one, and I realize and recognize there is this problem. Honeybees make money by selling honey. Solitary bees, to you personally, I'll ask you a question. How much do you pay for a coconut tree to be healthy? What? It's not a question you can think about, right? It's not a question, but I think about it greatly, knowing that at some point, there could be a disease that affects coconut trees. I know and that I'll start over. I believe honeybees communicate with the plants. And my scientific proof for that is, honeybees are able to read the stress of plants. That's how they know how to communicate with trees on their own. That's also how they are able to alleviate plants' distress. They're able to find the problem and alleviate that. Usually it's pollination, but it's also blight when there is an actual problem attacking, for example, a tree. We're having more and more of that. It's not global warming. It is a man-made problem. We know it is the agrochemical companies dumping pollution on our soil and it's causing problems. So that's then a real issue for these bees. Do you have a sense of the population of these bees? I mean, how endangered are they? So we only, UH Manoa, discovered seven of these species about 10 years ago. Kind of like our happy face spider. Have you seen the happy face spider in nature? So how would I see the happy face spider that many people in elementary schools in Hawaii know about? It's by going to the Bishop Museum and you can see it on a magnifying glass, not in nature though. So the solitary bees, how do we see them? I don't want you to see them because they're solitary bees. They want to be left alone and do their work in order to keep our orchids preserved. We're gonna go into this in more depth when we come back but right now we're gonna take a little break. I've got Darren Olson here, a beekeeper extraordinaire. We're talking about the solitary endemic Hawaiian bees and I'm your host, Ethan Allen here on Legible Science. So we'll be right back after a short break. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark and every Monday at one o'clock I present Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manila where we bring together researchers from across the campus to describe a whole series of scientifically interesting topics of interest both to Hawaii and around the world. So hopefully you can join me one o'clock Monday afternoon for Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manila. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea comes on every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii. Not just law, love, people, ideas, history. Please join us for Law Across the Sea. Aloha. And you're back here on Legible Science. I'm your host, Ethan Allen here on Think Tech Hawaii. I've got Darren Wilson with me today in the Think Tech studio here. Darren's a beekeeper, third or fourth generation beekeeper, whatever. Longer than that. Longer than that, okay. His ancestors from many generations have kept bees and so he is a very deeply knowledgeable guy about bees. We've been talking about the solitary endemic Hawaiian bees, stingless I guess, and they're facing multiple threats or are facing threats from particular kinds of insecticides that are being used. They're facing threats presumably from just general agricultural chemicals. They're facing threats because of land use that's broken up their habitat into smaller and smaller islands. They may be facing threats from things like climate change as temperatures go up. It could be facing all kinds of other threats, so. And we discussed earlier what happens if these bees disappear and these bees, very few people, see many of any of ever in their lives, doesn't seem big, but a bunch of flowers will then also go extinct when the bees go extinct. So this is, it's important that they be preserved and you say you are like the only person working on this issue. That I know of, correct. So how did you get involved in this quest and I know? Dumb luck. Okay. So on purpose, the way I'd like to put it for myself is I'm trying. I approach some startups and some venture capitalists and some other accelerators and just talking. I'm a generational master beekeeper. I'm trying to be humble here on your show, but I want to explain who I am. This is my subject matter expertise. And it's very difficult, for example, here in Hawaii to make a good sustainable living. So I've been working on different avenues. What is the most valuable product that can also be a very important component here in Hawaii to add value to our sustainable economy here in Hawaii. So going out of my comfort zone, this is where my journey began. While I'm talking, they ask questions like you are now. Aren't bees just the same thing? Aren't there just bees? No. What do you care about personally? So I'm asking you personally, do you like chocolate? Sure, I love chocolate. Do you want organic chocolate made here in Hawaii? Sounds super. Do you want that to be sustainable? Absolutely. So then you do need our endemic Hawaiian solitary bees because they do a better job of pollinating chocolate than honey bees in this one example. Okay. So if they all died, then we couldn't have chocolate here commercially. Instead of 40 pods on a chocolate tree here in Hawaii, if honey bees were the only solution to pollinate, then there'd be one pod per tree. So that's not economically sustainable. So now, asking a venture capitalist, is that a good enough reason to fund saving the Hawaiian solitary bees? Their honest answer back to me from the return on investment standpoint, they ask, couldn't we just import bees from South America, for example? Legally here in Hawaii, no, we're not supposed to bring over any invasive species. So it's the law that you're not supposed to and it's illegal. The answer from a venture capitalist can be, yeah, but we can change the law if it will save one sector of our economy. So yes, except for the Hawaiian value of having an endemic solitary bee that's now on the endangered species list, that once we lose that, we'll also lose orchids that are endemic to Hawaii. So not only do we lose the chocolate value, but now orchids and a species. As well as just biodiversity laws. They're not as sexy as pandas, but it's what I know. This is great stuff and it's important work, obviously it's, and that is a great example. And you would think you might be able to tie in with some of the folks who are doing the chocolate production and really get them psyched into this or they want to help you preserve lands, protect sort of the reservoirs as it were. So that's part of my struggle. When I did approach farmers, for example, I was saying, so from the honey bee standpoint again, UH Manoa knows that cucumbers, for example, have a higher value when honey bees are on the fields when it's time for cucumbers to flower. You have a better value cucumber crop. Explaining that to farmers, the immediate answer was no. Okay. I've now in my journey realized, I need to go outside of my comfort zone, communicate more, and maybe have to work with chefs, for example. And then get them to buy into the chef saying to the farmer, we want your produce to have a better shelf life and a higher quality taste. And the way to do that is to have honey bees on that farm. That makes sense, but it's a very hard case in with these solitary bees, which you can't really farm. You can't really raise highs with them because they're solitary bees. So do they have value? I haven't found a monetary value yet. So I have to go for the cultural value or the biodiversity value. I don't have a solution. Right. No, it's unfortunate, I think a problem that a lot of, it's becoming increasingly common, right? There are very few pandas, right? So, sort of cute and sexy that, you know, everyone loves them and will pay a lot of attention. And there are lots and lots of sort of less interesting, you know, less sexy, less cute animals, plants that are equally in danger, but are not gonna get the attention, not gonna get the big stars donating money in there to the cause, you know, and, you know, it's, that's very unfortunate, but presumably some of the other folks at UH Monola at least know these issues and have some, at least intellectual support for you there, you know. So they're giving us the research that we need to be able to explain why is this insect important when we work at it from a different standpoint as beekeepers, we know that they have value and we don't go out of our way to destroy them, but here now is the beekeepers' explanation that our Hawaiian plants, which are, I see them being less and less visible and seeing more and more plants that are non-valued, meaning it's just a nondescript tree that nobody eats or takes anything from versus a Hawaiian medicine plant that we would normally see in Hawaii 200 years ago. If we value those plants, and I'm trying to go back to one of your questions, how can people help Hawaii? Planting traditional Hawaiian plants is my 100% best answer for that question. What could we do, plant Hawaiian medicine plants, plant Hawaiian plants that are endemic to Hawaii, planting our orchids? Okay, that's good concrete stuff that people can actually work with, right? It's clean, clear, neat, it gives people a job to do and we'll do these bees a whole world of good, presumably, you can envision it particularly if you mapped out more or less where the populations were, you could start connecting them with corridors where there are now Hawaiian plants that they would also pollinate that could connect remnant populations and allow them to keep going, you know? Clean up some areas, hopefully, after some while, the pesticides all gradually wash away, at least drop to low levels, probably not. That's amazing. So, sort of shifting just for a moment here, of course, what background, I mean, obviously from your generation that you had beekeeping in your blood as it were, what sort of formal training did you have to go through? It wasn't really an apprenticeship that you basically learned at your grandparents' and parents' knees. So, as a seven-year-old, having to help dad, and what I'm saying, have to, it was spending time with my dad, which was fun. So we would, first, we'd learn from extraction, when he took the honeybee hives off of the honey into our house, and we would extract the honey from the frames. That was, basically, first introduction of hands-on learning to the extreme. And it wasn't, you got over your fear of bees quickly, is what I'm trying to say, if that happened to you. Right, now, it sounds like you learned this long, learned it deep, learned it firsthand. Yeah, that's great, that's authentic learning that's very best. Well, this is wonderful, this has been incredibly instructive to me. I had no idea of the richness of the Hawaiian bee story. And it's, from now on, people should know, right? Bees are not just bees, there are lots of kinds of bees, they do lots of different things. So I very much appreciate your being here. I look forward to your success in keeping these bees going and I wish you the best of luck with that. Thank you very much, John. Thank you. I'm Ethan Allen, you're here with me on Lethable Science. Darren Olson has been with us today and we'll be back next week. See you then.