At the beginning of February, I was invited to a meeting on 'Honeybees, Flora and Subsistence' at Kyoto University. I decided that the aspect of my research that might be of most interest to a gathering of honeybee specialists would be the 'semi-domestication' of social wasps in Japan. By 'semi-domestication', I just mean neither wholly wild nor wholly domesticated, and while I realise this is a very broad category, I use it out of necessity: There aren't any more fine-grained terms out there just yet, as far as I'm aware, that acknowledge the different stages between the wild and the domestic.
I think that one of the most interesting things about the way in which social wasps are managed here in rural Japan is that there is no top-down management of wasp keeping. Instead, in recent decades, people have begun to practise 'wasp-husbandry' in an increasingly intensive way. Could this be an example of grassroots domestication, in its early stages?
The picture below shows a present-day wasp hive in Kushihara (left), and diagram of a wasp hive dating from 1916 (right), the earliest known mention of wasp husbandry.
I think that one of the most interesting things about the way in which social wasps are managed here in rural Japan is that there is no top-down management of wasp keeping. Instead, in recent decades, people have begun to practise 'wasp-husbandry' in an increasingly intensive way. Could this be an example of grassroots domestication, in its early stages?
The picture below shows a present-day wasp hive in Kushihara (left), and diagram of a wasp hive dating from 1916 (right), the earliest known mention of wasp husbandry.
At the conference in Kyoto, thanks to a very interesting presentation by Nicolas Cesard, I was introduced to another potential example of grassroots semi-domestication - the Giant Honeybee (Apis dorsata). This species of bee is found throughout Southeast Asia and usually nests in very tall trees. Sometimes a single tree may have as many as 150 nests. Harvesting the honey and brood* of the giant honeybee is therefore a pretty risky occupation. However, in at least three locations worldwide, people have started to attract the bees to low-lying 'rafters'. The photos below show a giant honeybee colony on a rafter, and diagram explaining the 'rafter' concept.
* 'brood' refers to the larvae. These are also harvested, and sold for a price per kg that exceeds that of the honey itself. Beekeeping is often associated with honey, and products such as wax, propolis, pollen, royal jelly and bee brood might be considered side products.. but when the brood is sold as a luxury item, and a single nest might yield a greater income from larvae than it does from honey, how can one judge what the 'main product' really is?
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