'Planting' a wasps' nest, the old fashioned way

Yesterday, we went to Asuke (neighbouring village) and spent the entire morning chasing wasps to try and find their nests. We found four nests! The photo above shows a typical view taken while waiting for wasps to fly my way, and the photo below shows a wasp carrying meat in its mouth, about to enter a nest.

At midday, we went to a lovely place in the middle of the forest called 'The cedar child', and enjoyed good conversation accompanied by beers and hornets and other delicious things… 

After which we returned to the mountains to find more nests. Everyone was a little bit happily-but-lethargically drunk, and at first this seemed to have the effect of dulling wasp-chasing motivation a little. It definitely increased everyone's ability to become fixated on wasp-watching and daydreaming, though, even those with a self-professed fear of wasps and bees, as shown fairly well in this photo of Shigeru entranced by a newly-arrived worker wasp:

As the first wasps started to appear, collect our carefully placed squid, and make their return flights - all of which were very decidedly in a single direction - we were able to once again summon the energy to run up unlikely slopes and rely on unlikely tree roots in pursuit. Before 3pm, we had found two more nests, and decided to call it a day. Then, we dug up the tiniest nest I've ever seen, and I brought it back to Kushihara. Here it is:

And what next?

Well, for the last couple of weeks (perhaps months…), I have been occupied by an idea. I am away (working on a project in Oxford) for six weeks this summer, so I won't be able to feed a wasps' nest each day as people do here. However, I've been told many times that in the past, people used to simply transplant their wasps nests from the forests to a place nearer to their home, and didn't bother to feed them everyday. This reminds me a lot of word-of-mouth reports that I heard in the Congo, of people who would transplant caterpillar groups or even caterpillar feeding trees to a location within their own territory, in order to monopolise the subsequent harvest - but without any provisioning. So, I became interested in how people in the Japanese countryside used to monopolise their own wasp harvest, before the days of man-made wooden hive boxes…and because I didn't fully understand anyone's description of this method, I felt that I would like to try it myself.

I called on the help of Miyake Ichirou-san, Daisuke-san and Shigeru-san to replicate 'the old method' in my garden, and here are the results, step by step (moving the mouse over the pictures will tell you what's going on in each one):

First, take a bucket and make holes in the base

Dig a hole large enough for the bucket to fit into comfortably

Find something C-shaped to place over the bucket

Place the small wooden box containing the nest over the C-shaped object, so that the wasps can continue to build their nest in the space below, and pack 'red earth' (sand with a bit of cement) around the box to hold it in place, using a large stick to create an entrance

Place a roof and some earth over the top, and remove the stick to enable the wasps to go in and out of the entrance

Place an even bigger roof over the top of the nest, just to be on the safe side

This morning we checked the nest, and the wasps were flying to and from the entrance, looking for food. Fingers crossed they'll survive and thrive until autumn. My main worry is the tanuki (Japanese raccoon dog) family living under the storehouse… but hopefully they'll be happy enough eating everything in my vegetable garden in my absence and won't need to go for the wasps :)

Finally, I wonder if there is a person out there who, like me, can read and understand English better than Japanese, but would like to have a go at collecting and keeping wasps and doesn't quite know how to go about it…? Perhaps not. But, if so. the necessary information is now available here, and I would be more than happy to receive an email on this topic, anytime!