A Turning Point in Life with the Japanese Honeybee

Chikura in July is wrapped from morning in cicada song and the smell of the tide. In this season, as the summer light thickens, there is something I have to tell you.

The colonies of Japanese honeybees I had lived alongside for years in the satoyama at home have all disappeared this summer.

It was about twelve years ago that I first became interested in the Japanese honeybee. Moving to Minamiboso was what started me gathering information towards keeping them properly, and I learned steadily from books and from beekeepers. I still clearly remember the lift I felt in the spring of 2019, when bees moved into the first hive. What began as one colony grew to three the following year, and in the fullest year to fifteen.

There is one day I still cannot forget. I was asked to rescue a wild nest found on the grounds of an archaeological site, and went out to it. When the plywood came away, a splendid nest appeared, laid out in clean layers of honey store, pollen and brood. Catching several thousand bees carefully with a suction device I had built myself, and moving the brood comb across into frames, went on past nine at night. It happened to fall at the same time as a school trip by junior high school students, and one of them, watching the work, said that you could move house for them like that, and that it was kind. It was rescue and not extermination, and I still remember well how that one remark blew away the tiredness of a long job.

The honey that was harvested was bottled once or twice a year and shared as a side item of the shop. In the fullest years the harvest came to more than 10kg, and many customers took one home. In recent years the amount fell, and it reached the point where whatever could be bottled sold out as soon as regular customers were told of it. Even so, the voices of people who looked forward to it each year were one of the things that kept this way of living going.

Over these last few years, the number of colonies that could not get through the winter rose little by little. Queens in poor condition, parasites, and summers that have plainly turned extreme in their low rainfall and high heat. Standing in front of the hives, I felt more and more often that the ecology of the satoyama itself was changing. And this year the last colony too left its hive.

To be honest, I am still only part way through sorting out how I feel. Even so, I can put clearly into words how much the years spent with the bees gave me. Living alongside small creatures that gather only a little nectar and yet carry the large work of pollination changed the way I see the world. The habit of watching the four seasons of the satoyama from the bees' point of view has become something I hold on to, and it carries over into the work of roasting.

The days with the bees up to now are kept in the beekeeping record and in the article about Japanese honeybee honey.

I am sorry to say that there is no honey for sale in 2026. To every customer who has taken one home until now, my heartfelt thanks.

Wild Japanese honeybees are still living somewhere in this land. They carry pollination, a keystone of the ecosystem, and I want this satoyama to stay a place where they can live safely. That wish has not changed. Hoping that a day comes when a new colony can be welcomed into a hive again, I stand in front of the roaster today as well.