While enjoying the ever-changing mountain scenery through the rearing of Japanese honeybees, we set up Kushi style beekeeping boxes, invented by Mr. Fujio Kushi, in a place where the forest has been gradually improved, and while harvesting honey, feel the spirit of trees, touch the tenderness of flowers and plants, and blend into nature.
When did Japanese people become averse to insects? Parental factors and the environment are involved in no small measure in today's children who have become averse to insects. As the phrase "insects are dirty" suggests, the mere sight of an insect is enough to make a child feel aversion to it, without knowing the fundamental ecology of insects. So how can we change something we dislike into something we like?
The answer is very simple. It goes without saying that we humans receive many benefits from nature, but even the smallest microorganisms have a role to play, and we are kept alive by the environment they create.
Basically, insects do not harm us by themselves.
There is a word "beneficial insects," for example, my grandmother used to tell me not to kill house spiders, but spiders prey on cockroaches, small flies, and other insects. It may not be well known that the presence of insects in the house is not only a bad thing, but also has many good things.
There are always two sides to everything, and just as there are always two sides to everything, the fact that living creatures are living in a place means that they feel some kind of merit. If we do not harm them, we can coexist and coexist with harmless insects without separating them from other things, and this is the way to create a comfortable environment for human beings.
Creatures are always throwing words at us. Swallows do not nest in vacant houses, but rather, hoping to coexist with humans, they build their nests in places where people frequently come and go. I find it very endearing. We humans are creatures who know that our many complaints, such as dirty feces and noise, will come back to us in some form or another, and yet we repeat them over and over again.
I hope that we can become friends and exchange words with these compassionate people who heal us and embrace us.
If insects were really a danger, then all the news in the world would feature human versus insect, but how do non-human creatures feel about us when there is still a constant struggle between man and man?
The problem is not in others, but in ourselves. I think it is important to be in nature to enjoy the feeling of being able to change little by little.
The Japanese honeybee is a species native to Japan and has been distributed throughout the country since ancient times, but in recent years its population has been declining, and various theories have been put forward, such as pesticides and the effects of global warming.
Japanese honeybees tend to prefer forest edges rather than deep in the mountains, and their nectar sources include maple trees, Japanese hortensia, gonzui, and Japanese gentian.
The recent depopulation of forests has led to a decrease in the number of trees, which are the main source of nectar, in the dark forests dominated by tall evergreen trees, and this has probably contributed to the phenomenon of the Japanese honeybee population.