MALIA LAUER
Growing up on the North Shore of Oahu, Malia had, and still has, an insatiable curiosity to deconstruct complex, yet familiar living things, in hopes to understanding the interplay between plants and animals and insects. Now, as a yoga teacher and physical therapist, Malia continues to unravel the genius of the human body. When she’s not training ocean athletes on Maui or helping at-risk children in rural communities in Central America, you can find her tending to the local bees in her current hometown of Hana, Maui, with her partner, pro surfer Hank Gaskell. Malia’s passions are based simply on this: Paying attention, be it to ourselves, to each other, or to the creatures and land around us. This is all in hopes, she says, to live in the most balanced, conscious life possible.
I grew up on the North Shore, countryside of Oahu, but now live in Hana, east side of Maui, in a lush jungle, waterfall oasis. My partner, Hank, was born here and we have the good fortune of living in a place where much of what grows wild is edible, as well as having the fruit trees his parents planted back in the day. We spend a lot of time playing around Hank’s property, surfing, diving, and roaming the mountains looking for new ways to use plants to make into something edible or useful.
We are always experimenting with different ways to use the abundance of fruits in Hana. We try our best to let nothing go to waste. In the past few months, we’ve had a little more time on our hands (due to the Covid outbreak) and thought it would be a nice way to share some of the tasty treats we’ve been making by creating care packages for the local community. Each one is wrapped in ti leaf and filled with seasonal dehydrated creations (dried banana, honey coconut chips, fruit leather, cacao granola bars) and delivered to the recipient by us, if they’re on Maui, or by mail if they’re not. Our ingredients change based on what is ripe at the moment and we usually have add-ons of staples like fresh coconut milk and banana chutney. We thought it would be a good way for people, on and off of Maui, who can’t connect in-person, to send their loved ones a little homemade treat. It’s grown into something that is keeping us pretty busy, and it's been great to connect with our community. We’re stoked to have enough support to make a few extra to donate to Kupuna who could use a little extra love during this time.
We’ve also been tending to the bees, here, and harvesting their honey. Like most things humans haven’t yet ruined, bees can take care of themselves pretty well. Bees need two kinds of food: flower nectar (which later becomes honey) and pollen. In Hana, they have a lot of land and water to provide them with more than enough of both. As long as they have enough room to build a hive in, and it is clean, at proper temperature and not infested with other bugs, the bees thrive. While they don’t necessarily need us, we do our best to maintain a symbiotic relationship and keep the bees healthy by cleaning or changing the hive boxes if they rot or get infested by other pests and adding any extra space they might need (boxes and frames for them to build comb on) so they have no reason to want to leave their home. When the time is right and the hive is loaded with trays of honey-filled comb, we harvest!
The bees store more than enough honey for themselves, so it doesn’t damage a hive to take some of it occasionally, as long as you leave some for them too! In Hawaii, it is especially ideal because they can forage from flowers year-round, so they don’t go hungry. The honey harvest begins with removing honeycomb from the hive, scraping it into a bucket and then straining out the honey through a cheese cloth. A couple hives can take us all day because we do it all by hand and have no machinery. It may not be efficient, but we are able to take great care to save as many bees as possible and be deliberate about how much, and what parts of the of honeycomb we take. It is a sticky, sweet mess of a day that leaves everyone involved with a giant smile on their face.
Because we live in such a small town, we started getting calls to help people around the town who had bees somewhere they didn’t want them. Our apiary has grown pretty naturally that way. Once we began to understand that anything that seems like an “attack” is basically them trying to risk their life to protect their hive, we quickly learned that they are not something to be feared, but to respect. Unless you are very close to their hive entrance or literally taking it apart, they do not attack. On the rare occasion that someone gets stung, it was probably because the bee was getting squished.
Hank and I are now understanding more than ever the subtleties of going into the hive with the right attitude. Often, a bee suit is not even necessary for opening up the hive. It’s not something I’d recommend without a lot of practice. But with bees, and with every creature, it is a good reminder that having a deliberate, calm and positive demeanor may be more effective than having an armor against them. We have a good routine with them now but there was definitely a period of learning where we made a lot of mistakes. In the beginning, we had times where we would take the bees out of old houses without understanding the extent of how far back the hive went. Cases where we, not so gracefully, had to tear out a full wall of a house, cases where the bees entered the house, more than a few cases where we were quick and careless and probably accidentally killed the queen (which kills the whole hive!), and of course too many stings and bees-inside-the-bee-suit to count. It often seemed like going into a crazy warzone with all of the buzzing, attacking, stinging and demolition of wherever the bees had built their hive. I used to think the goal was to get in and out as quickly as possible. But both Hank and I have learned the art of relaxing and taking in the chaos with the confidence that we are safely rehoming them from somewhere they would otherwise be exterminated. We are lucky enough to get to benefit from the bee’s hard work and take some of the regurgitated flower nectar (yep that’s what honey is!). And the way I see it, the more important thing is that having bees around and learning how to relate to them, has given us an appreciation for these creatures that pollinate one third of our food.
People use the word “sustainability” a lot these days. But, honestly, I feel the word has lost any tangible meaning because it has now become such a trendy catch phrase in businesses, college degrees and even building supplies, whether or not the action or care of real sustainability is actually there. Of course I want our world to carry on and people to find a way to practice living in harmony with plants and other animals, but I find no solid way of telling whether these companies who claim to be “sustainable” are not just using it to attract more consumers. I think rather than bastardizing the word, we should instead work to cultivate experiences for children and adults that leave them with a deeper appreciation for the natural world that surrounds them and a better understanding of what effect unbridled consumerism has on that natural world. Based on the small sample size of people around me, the latter seems to work better in instilling real compassion and action in humans.