Suggested Updates

To the nice woman, who phoned in to ask about when my market times will be, I hope the updated web page answers your questions. You had some good ideas and I found all of your suggestions to be constructive. I WILL post more ways to eat honey in the future however, I don’t have a timeline. I will add more about what I’m doing. It just takes a long time to get anything done around here. I’m unable to make all the buttons different colors. This is something I didn’t know I wanted to do. Since you mentioned it I have been itching to figure it out. From what I have seen I can change the whole color of the banners but, none of the buttons! I didn’t forget you or your ideas. Thank you!

Helping the Food Bank

Hello Everyone,

I’m pleased to announce that I have successfully completed the 2025 Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program with the Hawai’i Foodbank. I think that programs like this really do help. If your wondering what that is here is an explanation from the Hawaiʻi Foodbank’s website:

Every year, Hawaiʻi Foodbank partners with the State of Hawaiʻi Office of Community Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service to organize the Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program. Hawaiʻi’s SFMNP offers eligible seniors $50 worth of coupons (10 coupons valued at $5 each) to obtain eligible foods without charge from participating farmers, farmers’ markets and roadside stands that have been approved to accept SFMNP coupons. Through SFMNP, kūpuna are provided with nutritious foods as well as education to emphasize the relationship of proper nutrition to good health.

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

The eligibility requirements to receive SFMNP benefits are as follows:

  • Age: Participants must be at least 60 years of age.

  • Income: Maximum household income of 185% or below of the US Federal Poverty Guidelines.
    Individual Household — $33,281.50
    Two-Person Household — $44,992.00
    Add $11,710.50 per additional household member

  • Residency: Participants must be a resident of the State of Hawaiʻi and must reside in the county of the service area they apply to.

  • Applicants must be certified to participate each year. There is a limited number of coupons that are distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Updates and Sign Up —>Hawaii Food Bank SFMNP

The Aftermath Of Bill 10

In short we won. The chair cut the unfavorable language and returned the regulations around beekeeping to the status quo.

Bill 10/Bill 64 was part of the City’s efforts to modernize the City and Counties Land Use Ordinances (LUO.) The LUO are the regulations that the City uses. The States regulations are defined by the Hawaii Revised Statues (HRS.) The LUO had large undefined sections that left legal grey areas and hampered the City’s functionality. The City decided it was time to modernize the LUO. Beekeeping has been regulated under the HRS for as long as I have been alive and beyond. So any issue regarding beekeeping, even when dealing with the City, would be default to the HRS.

Bill 64/Bill 10 updated the City’s regulations in the LUO. Beekeeping was included in this update. The City Council referred the intellectual work of crafting the regulations to the Department of Planning and Permitting, who referred it to a 3rd party consulting company.

At this point it was hard to determine why they wrote the regulations the way that they did. Did they barrow a statue from another state? Was there a special interest group that had a desire to limit beekeeping and beekeepers? I guess we’ll never know. What we do know is that they determined to limit the number of colonies on agricultural land.