This morning, we went to check on the hive of “WOW-chan,” the Japanese honeybee colony that joined us here at BeeCamp Oshiro earlier this year.
Despite the occasional visit from a yellow-legged hornet, the colony is doing great, with bees constantly coming and going.
Unlike Western honeybees, Japanese honeybees don’t really appreciate us humans opening up their hive for inspections. And trying to find the queen? Absolutely out of the question.
Give them that kind of stress, and they may simply decide they’ve had enough of us and move out.
Our job is really just to “assist.” That seems to be the best way to work with Japanese honeybees.
This time, for the first time since they moved in, they let us take a little peek inside.
Maria lifted the hive, and I slipped a smartphone in video mode underneath it so we could have a look at what was going on inside.
After a few failed attempts, we could see that at least seven combs had grown down almost to the bottom board, with the dark-colored Japanese honeybees busily moving around inside.
Yes! They’re doing really, really well!
Well then, we’d better add another box.
So I prepared a box with bamboo sticks crossed inside for support and tried sliding it underneath the hive.
And… it wouldn’t fit.
Sweat. Lots of sweat.
There was no turning back, so we finally secured it in place and came home.
“Good enough!”
We’ll come up with a better plan before our next visit.