Charlotte LR Payne
Charlotte LR Payne
  • About
  • Research
    • Traditional entomophagy in Japan >
      • An overview
      • Wild foraging and food insecurity
      • Imported insects compensate for a decline in wild foraging
    • The ‘semi domestication’ of wasps for use as food in contemporary Japan >
      • What can we learn from insect 'semi-domestication'?
    • Public health and edible insects
    • Wild and semi-wild harvesting in Zimbabwe
    • Wild harvesting in DRC
    • Gender roles in insect foraging and management
    • Edible insects in San Antonio Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico
  • Publications
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  • 日本語

4 kg of giant hornets

10/18/2013

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I want to write a bit about how it feels to dig out a hornet nest. It's really difficult to explain what this is like, and perhaps no one really wants to know. But I wanted to know :) So I tried it:

 Your movements are constrained by a thick plastic body suit, taped tightly at your wrists and ankles. The helmet on your head is uncomfortable and awkward. The net in front of your face feels utterly inadequate, when all of a sudden several hundred hornets (each about 4-5cm) fly at you. The sound as they hit the suit and net feels like someone is shooting at you with a pea-gun from all angles, but each shot comes with the intention of disabling you. And if they aim right, they just might be successful. 

Meanwhile you have a job to do. You have to get them, any way you can. You begin by trying to hit them into alcohol as they fly at you. This is a lot harder than it sounds, and what's more, it makes them angry. So lots of them come at you. The smell of the poison is really strong, and no, it doesn't compare to any other smell. (It smells like hornet liquor, if that helps at all.) 

Anyway. You've got to get the nest somehow. But it's inside a tree. And the tools you have don't seem to be working very well. You can't get it out. So you break the wood around the nest with your hands, for lack of any better tools. And you reach into the mass of angry hornets (hoping your double-layered gloves are thick enough to withstand the stings) to break off each layer of the nest they have spent the whole summer making... to take the children they have spent the whole summer feeding...is that ok? Well. The season is almost over, and they will all be dead within a couple of weeks whether you take them or not. But it does feel a bit like war.
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The aftermath was great, though. Self-indulgent, I suppose. You're essentially showing off, and everyone has some kind of strong reaction to the nest, either very very positive or just funny. For example, the first person we saw as we emerged form the forest was a woman working in her vegetable garden who was excited by the weight of the nest - 4 kilos! - and her husband, both full of enthusiasm. We gave a layer to the most skilled hornet hunter in the village, who was SO happy. And we wanted to give another layer to someone who had helped us to find the nest, but we could only find his daughter in law, who laughed and said she thought they (the larvae in the nest) were really cute.



I should probably add that the aftermath is not quite so good if you get poison in your eye. It's very, very painful, and long lasting. The best solution to this, it turns out, is to drink red wine.
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TV?

10/18/2013

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Yesterday, we gave some insect pasta to a TV presenter. It was fun - she came in knowing nothing except that she would be trying something unusual, and she liked it. (wasp larvae pasta, left)










Then we served a pizza topped with giant hornets and grasshoppers, and the whole insect thing became pretty obvious :)












I don't know what they were expecting and whether it will make for good TV or not, but it was good to be able to talk about the importance of insects as an environmentally  sustainable, traditional and healthy protein source to someone who was interested - and to make people laugh/smile along the way!

But perhaps the best bit was when the cameras had gone and she said she wanted to try the hornet liquor :)
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Friday morning

10/10/2013

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This morning I woke up at 6 with a hangover for the first time in a long time. So, I decided to make some tunnels for my vegetables! (That's not exactly true. It wasn't really a conscious, proactive decision. In fact I think I stumbled outside in a daze in search of fresh cool morning air and, feeling completely unable to face going for a run, started gardening on autopilot.) It turns out gardening is a brilliant hangover cure.

The photo above shows tunnels of chinese cabbage, cauliflower, red cabbage and broccoli. The crops not under the tunnels are spinach, shun-giku (edible chrysanthemum leaves), radish and pak choi.

After a couple of hours of weeding, replanting and tunnel-making, I realised I needed to find a use for the baby chinese cabbages that I'd pulled up to make room for others to grow. Obviously (again, I had hangover cures on the mind) I am going to make kimchi with them - so I harvested some nira, ginger, chillis and a persimmon, all from the garden (photo, right). The only ingredient I can't get from the garden is the silkworm pupae I'll put in to give it a savoury taste... Perhaps next year I'll keep silkworm too, and then I can make completely homemade kimchi!
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Giant hornets 3: Hunting

10/8/2013

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This weekend, we went hornet hunting again! The photos below explain the hunting process - how a single hornet is caught and marked using a piece of white plastic. This hornet is then followed back to the nest. For the whole story - hunting, digging up the nest, cooking - please see my research page or previous blog posts.
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Honey

10/6/2013

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Last week, Tetsuo invited me to come and help with his honey harvest! This mainly involved watching the bees (incredibly docile - I didn't even bother putting on my long sleeved top, let alone a net, and never felt threatened. VERY different form the hornets!), taking photos, and eating fresh honeycomb.
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Photos: Honeycomb (top left); Tetsuo opening the hive box (bottom left); Hive box tied to a tree (above), Tasting fresh honey (below)
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Wild Japanese honeybees, lured to nest in homemade hive boxes, and left to forage in forests away from the village, make really, really good honey.

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Giant hornets # 2: Cooking (and drinking) with Japan's deadliest animal*

10/3/2013

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This post follows on from a previous one, so just to recap: Tetsuo-san, Take-san and I-san had found a giant hornet nest, and I'd joined them to help 'dig out' the nest. This mainly involved hitting endless streams of giant killer hornets into a big container full of the strongest cheapest alcohol you can find around here, and carrying the nest back to the truck, while clothed in a full body suit taped up at every possible opening.

The result? A ~3kg giant hornet nest full of larvae, and a large container with approximately 150 giant hornets slowly dying of alcohol poisoning/drowning. This is what hapenned next:
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We brought the nest back to Tetsuo's house.

 Once the table was adorned appropriately with newspaper, bowls, tweezers, cocktail sticks and beer (does anything else warrant this combination of necessary items?), we began the process of harvesting the hornets, one by one (left).

The nest is mostly covered in white caps, protecting the larvae as they undergo metamorphosis through larval to adult stages. First, we removed these with tweezers (or fingers). The creatures beneath are all alive, and (at least to a beginner) there is no way of telling what lies beneath the cap - a near-adult or a still-white larvae...

If it's a near adult, it should be killed immediately! As it is fully armed (~6mm stinger and exceptionally strong venom) and probably not in a particularly good mood.

Most, however, are either ghostly white wasp-shaped creatures with large black eyes, or michelin-man esque larvae with tiny heads (see photo, right). These can be plucked from the nest fairly easily with a pair of tweezers, though it's important not to squeeze too hard (as this will break their skin). Some of the larvae have full intestines. These can be removed with cocktail sticks, in one swift movement (which is fairly quick and simple once you get the hang of it!)
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When all of the hornets have been plucked (still alive) from the nest, it's time to start cooking!
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The preparation of the rest of the larvae took a lot longer - we simmered them in a combination of soy sauce, mirin, sugar and ginger for about 45 minutes.










First, we separated the near-adult individuals from the rest. These were quickly fried in hot oil and sprinkled with salt, for instant tsumami (drinking snacks). 





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And there you have it - the world's most delicious (subjective) and most difficult to obtain (perhaps this is also subjective - but please send me examples of riskier alternatives if you've tried any) drinking snacks.




As for the drink itself, that takes a little longer to prepare... As you'l recall, we begin with an enormous container of adult hornets drowned in white liquor (right). 



This liquor contains not only the hornets but also the venom that each has released in the midst of its death throes. This venomous-alcohol is considered to be 'good for health', 'a drug that will keep you up all night', and even 'a cure for diabetes', depending on who you believe.




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This liquor, and the hornets inside, are placed into multiple bottles. (I was told that a rough ratio of 40 hornets to 1litre was appropriate) These are then topped up with more liquor. 

After 1 year, the whole bottle is infused with the taste of the hornets, and the colour of the liquor changes to a deep gold (there's probably less poetic ways to describe this colour, but I'm sticking with gold for now).

The photo on the left shows my homemade hornet liquor (right) and a premium bottle (aged 10yrs!).



[*I guess humans are really Japan's deadliest animal, strictly speaking. But, according to every source I can find, giant hornets are the most deadly venomous animal in Japan, causing between 20 and 40 deaths per year. They've also been in the news recently for causing a lot of deaths and injuries in China.]
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