Wild Bee Hunt?

[mbarker]

The early morning TV this Saturday had a short piece about a group here in Japan -- Nagoya, actually -- who have what I consider an unusual hobby.

First, go out in the woods with some friends, I think in the fall, and hang meat strips from some likely trees. A little octopus, maybe some squid, some beef. Now wait. Get some strips of paper ready... oh, say two inches long, maybe a quarter inch wide, with a skinny thread at one end. I think they just twist the paper into a tight thread, but I missed the preparation of these strips. Anyway, get those ready.

After a while, some bees will turn up, and chew on your meat strips. Carefully and gently, pick up a bee. Now touch one strip to the bee. I think there's a little drop of glue on it, but anyway, stick it to the bee so that the strip is hanging down. And let the bee go!

So now you have a bee with a little strip of paper hanging down. And as the bee races for home, try to follow him, running madly through the woods keeping an eye on that little white flag.

Frankly, even these experts lose track a lot. But after a while -- the group we were watching took five hours -- you may manage to follow one of these little fluttering flags through the woods to where a bunch of bees come and go from a small hole, probably in a crevice between some rocks. At this point, you get out a little flare -- they said the flares now are fireworks. Set it burning, and smoke the hive. Put on your white outfit, rubber gloves, beekeeper's hood, and with a small pruning hook on a handle, dig out the comb from the ground.

These are not honey bees, though. The bee chasers take these combs back home, and everyone sits down with long tweezers and pulls the bee larvae out of the combs. That's the prize in this hunt. Mostly cooked up with some soy sauce and spices, then eaten on rice or by itself. The whole family joins in the feast, and friends may also get some.

There was also a short diversion -- apparently in Nagoya, at the right time, there's a contest. People bring in the combs they have collected, and they are weighed. The winner this time had a little over 5 kilos of combs (10 pounds), so it's not a high-volume hobby. But there are quite a few people in the area who do bee chasing.

Incidentally, the bee chasers also raise the queens. I'm not sure how they separate them out of the combs, but they showed the shed where the bee chasers feed the queens, and then carefully box the sleeping queens when it gets cold enough, and put boxes of sleeping queens in refrigerators to wait for spring. According to the commentator, this care of the queens helps make sure that there are plenty of hives next year, and has been going on for hundreds of years.

So that's the hobby. Wild bee chases? Along with a contest, a bit of extra taste for dinner, and a little care of the queens to keep things going.

And you thought Japan was all about sushi?

Comments

[dialyn.livejournal.com]

It's quite a vision but I don't think it's a hobby I'm likely to take up. For one thing, here we are having disappearing bees so I don't think it's a good idea to stress out the ones we have left. There is something interesting about thinking of humans taking the place of worker bees to tend the sleeping queens. That doesn't seem an evolutionary step forward, somehow. I think I'll pass on tasting bee larvae as well. :-p Maybe it tastes better than it sounds but I'm having trouble with the mental image. It is no doubt good protein, but...no, I don't think so.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

I think the people taking care of the sleeping queens is intriguing, too. But I agree, I think I can pass on a bee larva for my rice. There's plenty of other things for me to eat. I did wonder briefly in passing whether this got started because somebody was really hungry or as some kind of challenge? I wonder sometimes how people get started on these kinds of things.