| Life of Japanese honeybees in the city area (Hirakata, Osaka prefecture) |
Japanese honeybees live in Hirakata city, where my school was located. I assume that density of the nest is 1 nest /1 km sq.
Whenever people find the nest or swarm of honeybee, they are afraid of them and call the environment maintenance office of the city to exterminate them. All the time experts of bees in the office exterminate the nests and catch the swarms. The office has the requests to remove the nests and swarms all the year around. Particularly in April and May, when is season of swarming, they get so many requests.
Exterminated nest at 1999 Swarm of captured at1999 Numbers of the requests in these several years are shown in the graph. The number has been increasing. It reflects that Japanese honeybees in Hirakata city are increasing. Someone says that this phenomenon can be seen in whole area in Japan, however exact investigation has not been reported.
The numbers of swarms, which came flying, in every months in 1996 and 1998 are shown in the other graph. The numbers are also based on information from the citizen to the office. In 1998, when spring came earlier, many swarms were found in April. While in 1996, when spring came later, most swarms were found in May. These were swarms in spring as their normal life style in nature.
But the other peaks were found in June or July, even though the height is not high comparing to that in spring. It seems to be due to second swarming of the nests, which already swarmed in spring. It suggests that some nests swarmed in spring and summer. In fact, I also observed that some of my breeding nests swarm in early summer.
Swarms found in September and October were escaping swarm from attack by hornets, or from very bad condition of the nests.