Down to one hive now

Yesterday I went up on the roof of the Agriculture building to show Tadauchi sensei and Kamitani sensei the Japanese honey bee hive activity, and when I tried to get some bees to come out of the traditional log hive by pounding on it (just checking to see how the bees are doing), I got no response.

I therefore decided to open it up and check on whether or not there were any bees in it. When I took off the top, I could not find a single bee, but there was lots of honey in the comb, so I decided to go ahead and harvest the honey and clean out the hive because if I did not, the wax moths would soon ruin everything.

I was quite surprised that there was so much honey left in the hive yet no bees. It is hard to tell when the bees left. I can only guess when it might have happened. I had thought that there was still a small bee population in the hive until a couple of weeks ago, but I could be wrong about that. Oh well…now I am down to one hive, the top bar hive that I made from the planter I bought at the home center when I first came to Fukuoka 2 years ago. The bees in that hive are doing great.

Tadauchi sensei is retiring at the end of this month. He is the department chairman of the entomology department at Kyushu University. Kamitani sensei is an associate professor of entomology. He is the one who took the pictures.

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2 Responses to Down to one hive now

  1. anwestover says:

    bummer on the bees leaving. Especially when they have been so hard to come by. Nice pics.

  2. Roberta says:

    Great pictures! I haven’t seen you in person for so long, but those show that you are the perfect combination of both your parents. We love honey in our house – I’m sure the young ones would question whether or not honey from Japan tastes different than the honey in the U.S. :-)

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