In this second part of the environmental history of beekeeping, we will concentrate on the determinant dimension of the history of Apis mellifera: globalization. As mentioned in the first part, A. mellifera followed the expansion of Europeans’ political and economic impact starting from the 16th century onwards. It spread first to the Americas before penetrating dramatically in the interior of the other continents during the 18th and the 19th century^[1]. The arrival of the Europeans settlers or knowledge was welcomed in three ways, either endured, deliberate or a mix between these two options. The preexisting local beekeeping culture took its toll and saw their respective trajectories diverge in different ways depending on domestic contingencies.

On the ecological level, the apparition of a new species in an ecosystem meant major perturbations among the local wild bees and pollinator species. The environmental consequence of the introduction of the settlers’ honeybee into a new habitat was the competition that began between domestic and wild species^[2]. The reduction of their natural habitat plus the competition for food led to a decrease in the number of the local microfauna, the species in direct competition literally dying of hunger. In the case study of Japan, oppositely to Australia or North America, had not the best suited environment for the Euro-American varieties of honeybee^[3]. The main hurdle to Apis mellifera’s expansion in Japan and more broadly in East Asia was represented by hornets. As we will detail further in this paper, the Asian hornet or Vespa velutina was one of the reasons explaining the relative absence of A. mellifera on the archipelago. Beyond environmental causes, culture has played a significant role in the trajectory of the Western bee on the archipelago.

The flipside of the coin has the tendency to be an unexpected consequence of a process taking place for a certain purpose. In our case, the profound reconnection of the circulation routes on a global scale, added to the intensification in volume and rate would backfire on the initiating territories on multiple levels. When the Asian hornet set foot in Europe at the turn of the century, it wasn’t the first nor the last species to disembark from the transportation that took them from the home environment^[4]. Actually, the Asian hornet took the opposite route taken by Apis mellifera when it arrived in Japan or the Asian mainland. In Europe, without any natural predator, the Asian hornet could freely expand its repartition area and feast on an Apis species that has not any of the tools developed by Asia cerana to counter their predator^[5].

The article demonstrates how beekeeping could be used for a study on a global scale for environmental exchange of species and how cultural factors have to be taken into consideration. The other stake in this article is to prove that the dramatic expansion of the presence of A. mellifera in the world can’t be considered a one-way phenomenon as imposed and coming from Euro-America only. In certain cases, the presence of the Western bee was deliberate and the fruit of local conditions, not to mention the circulation of living organisms and goods provoked by capitalism. The third point of demonstration argues that globalization isn’t an entirely controlled force by its initiators and might not be bound to one orientation.

In this instance, the Japanese archipelago would play the role of case study in this article. Japan, starting from the later years of the Edo period, began to intensify its exchanges with the powers with whom the Shogunate signed asymmetrical commercial treaties. Conscious of the semi-colonial in which the Qing empire has been enduring as a result of the Opium wars, the strategy adopted by the Tokugawa Shogunate and resumed by the Imperial regime consisted in the adoption of the tools coming from the Western Powers, in different domains^[6]. In the agronomical world, the same trend could be found. A partnership between public and private actors drove the adoption and the subsequent adaptation of the selected tools to the local context^[7]. Beekeeping is among one of the domains affected by this evolution towards a new type of agronomy.

The second part would look in the opposite direction to Europe, in order to link the career of V. velutina with the A. mellifera and A. cerana’s own histories. The intensification of global trade during the two last centuries rippled on local biosystems by major perturbations under the appearance of species that were put out of their native environmental context. The term “invasive species” would have to be taken with precautions because it is the fruit of our own human cognition of the interaction between species instead of an onslaught of a given species upon an entire region^[8].

Apis cerena is a bee species present all across East Asia and parts of South-East Asia, from Siberia to the Philippines and in most territories in between. The climatic range of such a large repartition area is bound to be diverse as well. It testifies the versatility of the species and their capacity of adaptation to a rather wide range of environmental contexts^[9]. A. cerana is a social species as well, dwelling also in cavities hidden from potential predators and stores honey as well, like its Western counterpart. The difference is to be found in the size of the hives and of the individuals: the colonies are smaller in number of workers and individually smaller in size compared to A. mellifera. The quantity of honey stored by A. cerana is comparatively smaller too and might be explained by the size of the colony and the nutritive needs of the bees themselves. The Japanese bee standard colony counts generally 5’000 to 7’000 individuals compared to up to 20’000 insects for A. mellifera^[10]. Inside the hive, the number of rows vary between 8 and 10 compared to the 12 rows and more for western bees.

Another key difference between A. mellifera and A. cerana is their defense method against giant hornets, called hyperthermia. When a giant hornet tries to penetrate a colony, the worker bees from A. cerana gather into a ball around the hornet and increase the temperature at the center of the ball up to 47 degrees. This way, the bees kill the hornet by heating it up beyond a point where its vital functions aren’t able to keep up. The defense mechanism unique to A. cerana has never been observed in Apis mellifera’s behavior, which has become a critical handicap for the European colonies. Confronted for the first time to a predator they never met, western honeybees are defenseless against the Asian hornet. Hence, since its presence has first been noticed during the 2000’s the Asian hornet became a significant threat for the survival of A. mellifera’s apiaries^[11]. It adds to other menaces such pesticides, the CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) and parasites such the acarian Varroa destructor.

Based on historical evidence, the first mention of beekeeping was made in one of the oldest written sources of Japanese history, the Nihonshoki or “the Chronicles of Japan”, which makes a mention of honey as a gift to the Emperor. We can observe from that anecdote that honey was considered as a precious item, luxurious enough to be made an imperial gift. Honey was then seen as a medicinal item too, due to the antiseptic properties of honey and its nutritive values^[12]. Throughout Japanese history, others mention beekeeping during the antique and medieval periods. It seems that during these periods, the practice of beekeeping was not very widespread and was confined to precise corners.

Beekeeping, as a craft and an art, began to spread on a larger quantitative level during the Edo period (1600-1868)^[13]. The three main regions where apiculture had the strongest hold were the island of Tsushima, the Kumano plain and the central part of the Japanese Alps. The reason behind the augmentation of the production of honey and related products was mainly geopolitical. The archipelago lived a long period of peace during the 268 years of the Tokugawa regime. The founder of the shogunate or bakufu was the third of the major unifiers of Japan (including Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598)) to put progressively the different feudal domains of Japan under a same political banner, consequently ending a century old period of conflict, the Sengoku period (sengoku jidai (1477-1573))^[14].

From an economic standpoint, the return of peace allowed a significant stability ideal for trade and the reestablishment of internal commercial circuits by land or sea. Globally, the trends that were observed during the Sengoku period pursued and were even amplified during the Edo period^[15]. The creation of castle towns (jōka-machi) and major ports, added to their subsequent growth allowed the emergence of a noticeable urban population, possessing their own culture where the roots of a consumption society could be found. The urbanites were mostly composed of warriors (bushi), craftspeople and merchants (chōnin) and pariahs who were a marginalized social group in the urban society (hinin). The merchant class in the urban areas of Japan, aided by local domanial lords (daimyō) created the bases for a market economy and laid the foundation for proto-industrialization^[16].

In the middle of this global panorama of economic prosperity and political stability, the products derived from honeybees shifted progressively from a purely religious and medicinal function to a new status, it seems, of commodity. As Federico Marcon noted in his book about honzōgaku or the study of pharmacopeia, the Edo period experienced a progressive desacralization of nature as a physical reality outside of mankind^[17]. The reason behind what might look like a contradictory reality was the increasing penetration of human activities in the realm of spirits and deities, the mountain or yama opposed to the village or the human realm (sato)^[18]. This phenomenon was driven by the needs of a growing population and a change of lifestyle among the population^[19]. At the same time, we can note a shift from extensive agriculture to intensive agriculture, mainly fueled by the diminished mobility of agricultural populations and the lack of newly available space for crops^[20].

These tendencies described above can be found for the case of honeybees as well. In 1705 by Kaibara Ekken, the bees were distinguished in three categories in the Yamato honzō or the “pharmacopeia of Yamato [Japan]”, based on their environment: the plain bee (nobachi), the house bee (iebachi) and the mountain bee (yamabachi). The status of this book is important because it represented the first book to describe the native fauna and flora of the archipelago in an encyclopedic fashion^[21]. The three sorts of bees weren’t assimilated to biological reality but mostly motivated by practical reasons. The three sorts of bees could have their honey harvested and needed specific methods. Kaibara wrote for instance: “there are numerous kinds of bees: the bees of Shitsuko, the ground bees, the honeybees, the giant golden bees, the carpenter bees, the mountain bees and the deer bees.”^[22]

From the technical point of view, each region had their own beekeeping tradition, even though the species was overall A. cerana had a specific husbandry method, varying because of the local conditions of the beehives. In the Kumano plain, nowadays partly lying in the Wakayama prefecture, honeybees were kept in empty pine tree trunks where combs were suspended by a thin iron bar. The method, still in use today, is quite adapted to forested environments where wood is readily available. Moreover, the subtropical climate of the plain, more broadly of the Kii peninsula, allows the hives to be protected from heavy rainfalls and the humidity of the region^[23]. Let’s consider another context: in the domestic context, apiaries adapt to the local economic realities. Near settlements, the agricultural surroundings make the use of straw as a prime material more affordable^[24]. Thus, it was possible to see, and still is, box shaped apiaries made of rice straw, tied to the walls of rural houses in Japan. Otherwise, the straw-made beehives can take the shape of a bell basket, where bees can find shelter.

The latter half of the Edo period saw the increase in the literature dedicated to bees and the best techniques to sustain a viable colony in order to yield honey regularly^[25]. The infiltration of the Western knowledge in general, through the Dutch by the port city of Nagasaki, inspired partly a literature mostly on agronomical matters with the objective to increase the productivity of the crops or the livestock^[26]. Among those books we may find for instance the proto-entomological “Notes of a thousand insects” (Chichō sen) by Kurimoto Tanshū.

The arrival of Apis mellifera is characterized firstly by a period of individual endeavors and trials to introduce Western honeybees in Japan. This pioneering phase began right after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and concentrated in different areas of Japan, mainly in the prefectures of Wakayama, Nagano and Tokyo proper, we have trace of experimentation of Western honeybees even on the Ogasawara Archipelago^[27]. As the Japanese apicultural circles were discovering the technology developed by Westerners for beekeeping, the Western public could discover how beekeeping was done on the other end of the Eurasian continent during the Universal Exhibition of Vienna in 1873-4. The exhibition is the occasion for the newly established Japanese government who took the occasion to study closely the latest advancements of Western industries, while demonstrating what was the local craft in each province in two specimens gathered first at the future University of Tokyo before being sent to Vienna^[28]. To the eyes of the government officials, in particular Ōkuma Shigenobu (1838-1922) and Satō Tsunetami (1822-1902), the World’s Fair of 1872-3 was taken seriously and went beyond an operation of cultural diplomacy^[29]. One of the commentaries about the Japanese garden of the pavilion gave a detailed description of it: «In the park located on the right of the Exhibition, not far from the pavilion of the Viceroy of Egypt, is the Japanese garden, with its houses, its small river in miniature, on which is thrown a tiny bridge in bamboo.

The entrance is on the side of the flower exhibition: two poles, supporting long strips of painted paper, invite you to enter this section where the strange is mixed with the fantastic.
[...]

The paths are lined with small stones of different colors; trees which in our climate are renowned for their size, such as the oak and the fir, are represented by dwarfs of an original effect. It is a special taste of the Japanese to have completely stunted trees in their gardens. They have procedures to restrict the growth of trees and force them to remain small. Their joy is at its peak when they can manage to shrink an oak tree to the height of a rose bush.
[...]

This fish represents a carp of remarkable muscular strength, which allows it to swim up streams and even waterfalls. This paper fish is placed on the roof of the houses, on the occasion of a great festival which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month, the festival of the boys. It is the symbol of strength.
[...]

The Emperor and Empress of Austria have deigned to inaugurate, by their presence, this Japanese garden where the flora bends to the most whimsical whims, and the public rushes every day to admire these dwarf trees, which are always a subject of astonishment, as well as the Japanese house with its paper hangings, its paper blinds and its carpets, always of paper, without paper of the lanterns whose transparency allows to admire its paintings varnished with an eminently Japanese art.” ^[30]

We can consider it as an operation of scientific and industrial intelligence. The personnel employed at the Japanese pavilion counted 72 persons, including 41 officials, 6 interpreters and 25 craftsmen among whom were beekeepers^[31]. Among the shown objects were a replica of the Buddha of Kamakura or objects purchased in Hokkaidō and the Ryūkyū Islands. The impression emanating from the pictorial documents of the pavilion's inside was the condensation of the most notable sights of the archipelago in a small space, highlighting what the Japanese identity was based on, in the eyes of officials.

One document presented in what consisted of Japanese beekeeping traditions, “A Picture of Beekeeping” (Yōhō Ikken). The picture illustrates in an ukiyo-e style painting the principal tools of beekeeping, the Asian bees, the nefarious species and method employed to extract honey and wax (Pic. 2). Such a snapshot is particularly precious for the chronology of the partial shift from one type of practice to another and how both of Western and local beekeeping styles would interact^[32]. The illustration shows that beehives used in the Japanese style context were quite resemblant to what we could find in the late Meiji era, about 30 years later. One explanation could be that the technological inspiration of Western beehives inspired from the Langstroth model was already in vigor or that one strain of apiary would look similar to what we find a few decades later^[33]. This document presents us a snapshot of beekeeping during this pivotal moment where the influence of the Edo period was still vivid. The text above the illustrations explains where to find wild bees and how to capture them with a special basket. Later, the explanation goes on to differentiate the different species of bees and their respective location, like the “Bear honeybees” or the “Mountain honeybees” which are called in Japanese Kumamitsubachi and Yamamitsubachi found in the province of Izumo (present Shimane prefecture). This type of bees is reputed to be very hard to raise, identified nowadays as Carpenter bees (Xylocopa family). The writer warns the reader that “Red bees” (akabachi), or in latin Vespa simillima xanthoptera could be a danger for the Bear bees because as hornets, they could possibly enter the nest and decimate the colony. The Yōhō Ikken continues its detailed summary of Japanese beekeeping by process of swarming and the method to harvest honey and their different types. “The combs will have to be cut with tools if it cannot be done with hands. The combs are placed after that in a bamboo staff sealed with a piece of fabric or a sift. The honey will drip in the bottle by itself. The honey would have a yellow-brown color and would look like candy, this honey is called the Taremitsu or “gravy-honey”. It is heavier and darker than the honey made in villages. The rest will be put in a cloth bag and placed in a wood press like indicated in the scheme, producing honey again. But if the honey is mixed to larvaes and combs, it is considered of inferior quality called Shiborimitsu or “pressed honey”."

In the credits of the text lies an important name, because the document was sold at the Watanabe Apiaries (Watanabe Yōhōba), whose owner was Watanabe Kōichi and to which this reproduction above seems to have belonged. The Watanabe family likely occupied a major role in the arrival and consolidation of the A. mellifera in Japan among others^[34]. One of his relatives, Watanabe Kiyozato, was a teacher in the Prefectural Agronomical School of Nagano, Chīsanogata district^[35]. The school was one of the first experimental stations established by the central and the prefectural governments for agronomical research, where beekeeping occupied an important role in the research^[36]. Even though little is known about Yoshida Kōzō, the author of the book “The New Treaty of Experimental Beekeeping” (Jikken Yōhō Shinsho) summarizes the advancements made by the Mt. Nikkō Agronomic Experiment Station in Gifu prefecture. The interesting characteristic of the document is to compile the results of four decades of research about the implantation of Apis mellifera in Japan^[37]. The research for the experiments began in 1877, with the first imports of Western honeybee hives from the United States and Europe, based on the History of Great Japan’s Agronomy^[38]. The main inquiries were to find the best suited places for beekeeping with A. mellifera in Japan, to select the best-suited varieties, to develop the optimal form of apiary for local needs and to study the potential honey yields and eventual incomes made by doing so. “From a certain fashion, the life cycle of bees is formed of three seasons: spring, summer and autumn. The most adequate place is a territory in high altitude where flowers bloom steadily and the weather relatively fresh. Moreover, the mountain chains are continuous in our country. Most of the time, their extent goes until the seashore, without the exception of places like Tanba, Yamashiro, Yamato, Iga, Kai, Ōmi, Mino, Hida, Shinano, Ueno, Shitano and Iwashiro, cornered on four sides by mountains. The inland provinces and the highlands, with marshes and lakes in between, with fresh summers as mentioned above, where flagrant flowers disperse their sweet perfume until the end of autumn are undeniably the bees’ favorite biotop.” ^[39]

Based on the work of Yoshida, the best sites in Japan are located in mountainous or hilly areas in valleys, where the best conditions for beekeeping can be found. The concerned provinces are: Tanba, Yamashiro, Yamato, Iga, Kai, Ōmi, Mino, Hida, Shinano, Ueno, Shitano and Iwashiro. Indeed, most of the cited provinces are landlocked provinces situated in the Japanese Alps or in the neighboring mountain chains of Kantō or Kinki regions^[40]. The principal issue was to find non cultivated fields, mostly rice paddy fields, because honeybees need a great deal of vegetal diversity for a maximum pollination period, so for the production of honey too. The varieties that were finally dimmed as the finest were the Italian and Cyprian bees^[41]. The reasons behind the selection of the bees were motivated by a down-to-earth approach, practical approach from the beekeepers. Bees had to be not aggressive, highly productive, easy to maintain or to manipulate and extremely docile^[42]. Concerning potential yields of honey, the available surface for beekeeping was around 1’7000 square ri (=3.93 km), which represents 258’570 km2 and about two thirds of Japan’s total current surface (377’975 km2). This allows to place 850’000 apiaries in total, that could produce in average annually 2’125’000 monme or 708 T of honey every year, for the price of 4’300’000 yens of 1910 in total^[43]. We have to keep in mind that these prices were hypothetical profits and the historical yields during the pre-war period.

The most interesting part of the book and the one produced during the Meiji period and later is how modernity as a notion has been introduced to the world of beekeeping. Beekeeping, for this instance, seemed to have followed the same trajectory as the silk industry. Both industries have local premodern roots and based both on the insects to produce a range of products with a large array of use^[44]. Moreover, the silk and honey or beeswax industry developed during the premodern period a long and complex production process where numerous skilled workers were involved^[45]. The bombyx and the bees were considered beyond their sole being but more from a practical point of view, where the economic and technological aspects mattered mostly. In a way, by reading the documents of the era, we might feel that bees and silkworms were a cog, a part of a larger system organized towards the obtention of the final products^[46]. When Japan became involved further into global exchange networks, as Julia Aderney Thomas points out in her book, Nature came to be considered as a temporal phenomenon^[47]. Translated into geopolitical terms, countries competed against each other for the best economic opportunities and political high ground. Japan, willingly or not, viewed itself backwards, late compared to Euro-America in various domains, but mostly in the military and industrial sectors. In order not to be reduced to a semi-colonial status, the country was bound to “catch up” by adopting the tools of Western Powers. Integrated to the agronomic sector, the silk and the honey industry underwent modernization and became objects of progress (shimpo)^[48]. In other words, the premodern methods were labeled obsolete and had to be “ameliorated”. He writes: “Even though our country has a tradition of beekeeping, the yields of honey are varying in spite of this isn’t the only source of income that comes to beekeepers’ minds. Based on a survey of 1886, the number of apiaries in Tokyo, Kyūshū, Shikoku and Chūgoku - one urban prefecture and thirteen others- is 38’615 for a total honey production of 99’703 kin [1 kin = 600 g]. In 1887, the number was of 36’951 apiaries, with a price of 45 sen per kin and down to 22 sen for European and American honey. However, the techniques used in the beekeeping industry there are slightly ameliorated compared to ours. Although each country is moderately above average, these reformed techniques are fairly new; by applying those to our industry, we could surpass the United States.” ^[49]

Concretely, one part of the so-called amelioration process consisted in a quest for productivity and for efficiency of production methods. Another part of this search was to find the way to implement the important structural changes reformers had in mind and concretize these into the rural economy and by spreading their findings to a larger public beyond the circles of beekeepers. In certain areas, the two industries intertwined because of their common geographical delimitations. For example, Nagano prefecture was famous for both of these industries, leading to overlapping with shared personnel and education structures^[50]. For example, Miyoshi Yonekuma (1860-1927) was one of the contributors of the foreword of “The Experimental Beekeeping” volume. Being the director of the Agronomical School of Chisanokado, he was considered as one of the first specialists of sericulture in Japan, after studying under famous agronomists and abroad in silk weaving centers of France and Italy^[51]. The agronomic circles of Nagano being probably small helped pretty much to interconnect and create bridges between the different fields of agronomy. In fact, beekeeping was generally considered as a sub-field of the domain rather than a field in its own right.

The author of the “Extended Amelioration of Beekeeping” (Zōho yōhō kairyō setsu), published in 1889 and being the first modern beekeeping book of Japan, Tamari Kizō (1856-1931), shares the same professional fate as Miyoshi. Born as a retainer, he did a first formation in agronomy before going to the United States, especially in Michigan, to further his education before coming back to Japan working as an agronomist in different departments of the Meiji State^[52]. The pinnacle of his career was to become a parliamentary in the Chamber of Pairs, the High Chamber of the Imperial Parliament in 1922. Knowing that Tamari was formed in the United States explains well the reason why Japanese beekeeping has been heavily influenced by its American counterpart. The influence of United States’ agronomics could be felt in other areas of the agrarian sciences, since most foreign advisors in the matter came from there^[53]. In this instance, the foreword of Tamari’s book is interesting to analyze from this point of view because the author placed himself as most recent chapter of a long history of beekeeping that began with Aristotle in Ancient Greece before transiting by United States, as the first colonies of Apis mellifera crossing the Pacific Ocean in 1877^[54]. To further this argument, Euro-America is taken as a reference for the reformation of the Japanese beekeeping, in terms of techniques and of production aims: “Such a situation is similar to the yields of American honey production, with important profits, depends on the climate and the variety of honeybees. Moreover, the plowing of large swaths of land can enrich the zone with flowers and grass. By bringing back somehow these husbandry methods, it [wouldn’t suffice]. In the aforementioned country, the annual yield per colony is 100 kin, while the colonies kept with the traditional methods don't go above a meager 10 kin.” ^[55]

Along with the experimentations of Tamari, joined by Aoyanagi Kōjirō (1868-?), successful transplantation of Apis mellifera hives from Italy, Cyprus and the United States have been done mainly in two extra areas of Japan outside the prefectures of Nagano and Gifu: the capital itself and the Wakayama prefecture. Tokyo was the point of arrival of Western honeybees on mainland Japan a first time in 1877 in the district of Shinjuku and in a second phase in 1894-5 with a second and more massive introduction from the Bōnin Archipelago in Shizuoka prefecture, after near twenty of successful acclimatation of bees on the Ogasawara Islands^[56].

With the success of Tamari’s book and of the experimental stations scattered across Japan, we can notice at the turn of the 20th century a rise of interest in general for the art of beekeeping^[57]. The number of books and handbooks for farmers experienced a swift increase, which testifies the interest of the public for beekeeping in Japan at this time. Beyond the editorial argument, what could explain the growing interest of the Japanese farming population during the first decades of the twentieth century, that could be considered as the spreading decades of the Western beekeeping into the archipelago as a whole and beyond?

One part of the answer could be the beginning of the distribution of beehives outside of experimentation stations by Aoyanagi Kōjirō starting from 1905^[58]. The end of the Meiji era (1868-1912) and the beginning of the Taishō era (1912-26) announced the diffusion of Western-inspired beekeeping to the rest of the archipelago. The diffusion of reformed knowledge on beekeeping was further helped by the apparition of specialized periodicals throughout Japan on the eve of 20th century. In 1909, Watanabe started publishing for example the first beekeeping-oriented periodical with the titled “The Friends of Beekeeping” (Yōhō no dachi), followed by other periodicals on the same period, for example the “The World of Beekeeping” (Yōhōsei) along 50 other magazine titles^[59]. If we dig deeper, we might understand this series of apparitions as a response to a growing demand but as also an accelerator for a domain where publications were still sparse, the public was ripe.

At the very end of his book, Tamari wrote a last chapter in the fifth edition about the situation of the honeybee market. In his opinion, the expansion of the market in the short span of 18 years is due to several factors: a better access to resources, a better protection of the apiary itself by fumigation based on more efficient fumigation products, and in addition to that the value of commodity dedicated to Japan-made honey in main urban markets, in Tokyo for example^[60]. The rising demand for honey coming from all over Japan would attract more and more farming families to invest in beekeeping in hope to make interesting profits. For example, six kan of Ogasawara honey or 21 kg contained in six jars would cost in Osaka 6 yen and 50 sen or 5 kan of Nagano honey (16,75 kg)^[61]. The demand for local honey is influenced by the accessibility to foreign honey as well, which are imported goods. Tamari expresses a few concerns about the competition of lesser quality foreign honey in the domestic market. One of the main leviers would be the Honey Extraction Law (Tomitsuhō), regulating the quantities and the harvest period hence controlling the potential expansion of the domestic production capacity^[62].

The expansion of beekeeping as an interesting source of income for farming households as well as the further transformation of honey as a consumption product, a commodity, would lead to the durable implantation of A. mellifera in the archipelago in disfavor of the local bee species, including A. cerana. At the beginning of the Shōwa era, the disparities between the two species was eloquent in certain areas of Japan. Let’s take for example the 1933 document called “The Current Situation of Beekeeping in the Prefecture” (Kenka ni okeru yōhō no genkyō), which declares that the number of beehives in prefecture of Nagano between Apis mellifera against Apis cerana is 11’850 against 3’867 colonies^[63]. There is little data about the other prefectures, so it is risky to extrapolate such numbers to the rest of Japan. We might assume, however, that one of the most productive prefectures in honey could reflect an analogous disbalance with the caveat of the contrast of it. The differential might be the productive constraint due to the local beekeeping culture, pushing to maximize the produced quantity of honey.

When we move progressively to wartime Japan, the conditions of the war tended to take a toll on the beekeeping industry as a whole, shortages and military demand which used honey and wax for war goods put beehives and beekeepers under pressure^[64]. The absence of men due to drafting didn’t help but the tense overall economic and material situation would have been the main break to beekeeping activities, since beekeeping was taken in charge by spouses and children in farming households. Looking at the reports of agronomic statistics of the Ehime prefecture in 1940, we could see the evolution of the honey production and the numbers of beekeeping households. Covering the first period of wartime Japan, right before the Pacific War- between 1935 and 1940, the evolution of the principal indicators is contrasted, the only indicator that decreased was the foreign bee species. The year 1939 seemed worse, where the overall indicators were lower, due probably to the drought that struck Japan and Korea. Most interesting, the trend in the five observed years was a slight fragmentation of the beehives between a greater number of beekeepers, sharing 6,794 hive boxes between 2,620 households^[65]. As a supplement to the households, the ratio of boxes between native and western species shrunk first, before bouncing back in 1940 (ref. infra). In contrast to Nagano, the prefecture of Ehime bred more native bees than Apis mellifera, with a ratio of 1.6 in 1940.

Year/ Number of hives	Foreign species	Native species	Total
1936	2'769	4’903	7’372
1937	3’138	4’607	7’745
1938	2’824	4’520	7’344
1939	2’809	4’392	7’201
1940	2’701	3’974	6’675
1941	2’621	4’173	6’794

Year/ Hives per Household	Up to 10	Between 10-50	Above 50	Total
1936	2’527	56	7	2’590
1937	2’658	63	9	2’730
1938	2’596	50	6	2’652
1939	2’596	66	6	2’668
1940	2’451	56	5	2’506
1941	2’568	46	6	2’620

The era when Western-inspired beekeeping began to take root firmly in the Japanese soil coincided as well with the formal initiation of the Japanese Empire and its intensification on the continent. Japanese encroachment in its colonies translated environmentally speaking into different forms depending on the status and the local needs of the colonizer. For example, Taiwan and Korea were designed as granaries of Japan or more largely as agriculture colonies whose goods and products were shipped to the home islands^[68]. However, we need to take into account as well the chronology of the colonial control on the concerned resources and populations. There were indeed different phases in the environmental management of the colonies between 1895 and 1945, but we can break it down to three periods. The first period from 1895 to 1918 was a period of pacification for the first territories to have fallen in Japanese hands (Taiwan, Korea, Karafuto, South Manchurian and Tsingtao port), which was characterized by the construction of infrastructures ensuring the access a durable control of the acquired territories^[69]. The second period from 1918 to 1937 would be a calmer phase of assimilation where the central government integrated the territories and organized in a larger framework at the scale of the realm. The invasion of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army forged the path to the third phase, during which the authorities increased the infrastructures and the heavy industries to maximize the potential of the colonial territories. These investments were a means to solidify the military potential of the continental territories in the face of the threats on the continent. The last phase ending in 1945 was the mobilization of the whole realm in total war and fueled an intensive military expansion in order to secure key-resources to the war effort^[70].

Through the phenomenon of empire, the animal and vegetal collaborator species (willingly or not) accompanied their human counterparts in their movements around the globe, so did honeybees. In conquered territories, traditional forms of beekeeping existed already^[71]. The Japanese presence in those influenced to an unknown extent the practices, as indicated by a survey of the products found in Manchuria made by the Kwantung Army. In 1919 was a document seeking to detail the methods and the products found in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia (Manmō). The purpose of such a publication could be interpreted as a showcase to stress the economic interest lying on the continent for Japan^[72]. In this survey, beekeeping is described as marginal activity and not considered as a primordial activity^[73]. The most noteworthy fact is that the Kwantung army classified this activity under animal husbandry and by mentioning such an activity, it testified the economic interest emanating from the region as a minor sector.

More interestingly, in the press, one could find some traces from the influence of Japan in local beekeeping cultures and how the Empire affected the concerned zones’ conditions. The press, in modern history, reveals itself to be the perfect proxy to observe the pace of society and to understand its preoccupations at a given epoch^[74]. Obviously, we have to stay careful not to assimilate the opinion of a certain journal with the global opinion of a society on a certain subject. Concerning exporting the Japanese beekeeping products or technical knowledge outside of the home islands, newspapers gave an indirect insight of the perspective of expansion or profits given by an outside market or the trials of reforming the local beekeeping. The 26th November 1930 edition of the Manshū Nichi Nichi Shimbun “the Manchurian Daily” stressed the promising future of beekeeping in Manchuria or more globally Northern China by comparing it to Hokkaidō, the most northernmost of the home island known for its high productivity in honey and related goods. “According to a recent survey, the number of beehives in the jurisdiction of the Dalian Civil Affairs Bureau is only 385, and the yield is a meager 2,700 pounds, equivalent to about 9,000 yen. In Tianjin alone, the number of Japanese merchants importing bees during the summer season this year reached 40, and in the short period from January to September, more than 100,000 boxes were imported, which is more than 12 times as many as last year's 8,000 boxes. The Japanese bee association was formed on November 1 for the purpose of improving the bee trade, guiding and supporting the development of beekeeping in Northern China, and promoting the mutual prosperity of the bee industry”^[75]. We can see in this extract how Manchuria was seen like Hokkaidō as a radiant frontier able to solve domestic problems by transforming it into a wild terra nullius^[76].

In another article published in 1936 in the Kyōgi Nippō or the “Beijing Reporter”, the local government of Jiandao (Jilin Province, PRC) worked on a five-year plan to ameliorate the condition of the farmers by augmenting the productivity consisting in the introduction of new agricultural techniques. Beekeeping played in that perspective the role of the aiding factor in the augmentation of the global outputs, in other words a tool. “Beekeeping, the cultivation of fruit trees, apricots, leeks, peaches, pears, grapes, etc., and the production of linen and hemp yarn will be encouraged, with the aim of making the farmers self-sufficient”. ^[77]

Let’s turn now to the environmental effects of the emergence of Western-inspired beekeeping in Japan. The consequences of such a shift are not spread equally over the realm’s surface, they were mainly concentrated in Hokkaidō, Nagano, Gifu, Yamanashi, Aichi, Kyōto, Wakayama, Fukuoka and Kumamoto. These regions share the characteristics to have mountainous areas where intensive agriculture was difficult to sustain. The brunt of the ecological effects took place inland, in spaces regrouping the conditions needed for a productive beekeeping. These included a fairly fresh space, with a long flowering season with vast amounts of flowers whose diversity could sustain a solid vegetal ecosystem^[78]. It was per say, not only honeybees that raised an issue but the whole system in which the colonies were embedded. The main use of honeybees, Western or Japanese, came to pollinize different crops, whether it was cereals, vegetables or in an orchard. Being linked to an intensive agricultural system as side-activity or as an auxiliary, colonies’ number was from now on dependent on the available pollen and nectar from agriculture in addition to the already present resources. The boundaries of bee’s expansion now depended on the needs of the farmers, entering into direct competition with native bee species^[79].

Besides this direct ecological competition between domesticated and wild species, the overall impact of A. mellifera and A. cerana blends with the train of consequences provoked by the global changes happening to Japanese agriculture during the industrialization. The need for new farming lands and for wooden fuel led to an encroachment of the coastal and valley population into the highlands. The expansion of the human influence into highlands led to forest depletion and the fragmentation of the local species habitats, to the extent that we could observe “bald mountains' (hageyama). In his book, Conrad Totman pointed out the intensification of agriculture and its subsequent motorization, without mentioning the dependence of urban centers for their food supply, would spread progressively across the archipelago mostly in the central regions of Japan^[80]. Fertilizers and intensive agriculture would lead in the long run to a deterioration of the soil.

For orchards, new varieties of crops would be introduced like apples, mostly cultivated in the Northern part of Honshū and Hokkaidō, who saw a great part of its biotas transformed into dairy farms or pasture lands. With the spread of agricultural manuals throughout Japan, introducing new types of farming techniques and new rice crops extended farther the frontier of traditional Japanese food agriculture to territories like Hokkaidō lowlands^[81]. In those circumstances, honeybees became an important pillar in the crop-system to sustain its pollination while producing financially valuable goods.

As we have seen before, the introduction of A. mellifera to Japan was in a context of intense changes in social, political, technological and scientific levels. Western-inspired beekeeping followed the paths of globalization as the archipelago, freshly put under new management, by engaging further into world exchange routes, whether ideological, material or biological^[82]. If we take into consideration the case of A. mellifera, the trajectory of this species traced its own network where important nodes were in Europe, in the Americas before crossing the Pacific Ocean to Japan^[83]. We can look even closer and notice that A. mellifera spread again from Japan to the continent, mainly to Taiwan, Korea and mainland China.

However, the network described here is one example among others and each history would draw its own map whose past would be recovered by historians. Some of these exchanges had monodirectional interactions, but even commercial routes meant to function in a way had the tendency not to work the way it was primarily intended. Let us take the example of the recent history of the Asian Hornet or Vespa velutina. We must fast forward a few decades of where we left off, during World War II to the end of the 20th century.

The end of World War II and the reestablishment of worldwide networks of exchange, despite the porous divide between Western and Eastern blocks, reinforced the trend of globalization especially from the economic, intellectual, social and cultural perspectives^[84]. The primordial difference with the pre-World War II period was the shift of logic in the dynamics of globalization. The decline of European power as the main geopolitical center of gravity and the accession of the United States and USSR to the rank of superpower led to the end of formal colonial empires. Most of Africa, the Middle East and Asia gained their independence from former colonial powers even though some of these newly independent entities kept close ties with their former colonizers, e.g. the Community of the Commonwealth^[85]. As a repercussion, we can notice a transition from a model based on politico-military competition between colonial powers to the rise of another taking its roots in the increasing economic integration of different parts of the globe, led by private corporations backed mostly by the states who share their prosperity^[86].

In materials terms, the acceleration of globalization concretized itself with the densification of the traffic of goods, people, animals and information^[87]. The overall cadency of the transportation infrastructure behind gained speed as the expectations for transportation time and technologies themselves got more efficient. The pursuit of cheaper labor prices and raw materials eventually led to the relocation of whole sectors of the industry from the industrialized countries to industrializing ones. In fact, the Postwar period was a second period of intense industrialization for the territories outside of Euro-America and Japan. In East Asia, the last third of the 20th century marked a massive rise in the industrial capacities of China after the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the second successor of Mao Zedong after his death in 1976^[88]. Deng’s reforms led to a shift in the economic policy of China, akin to state capitalism, where the entrepreneurial freedom as well as the investments were limited by state control. The main result of this policy turn was to integrate the PRC further into the world economy, after the autarkic trial of Mao Zedong under his leadership.

The environmental intended consequence of such intensification of merchandise exchanges around the planet was to multiply the opportunities for intercontinental exchanges across once uncrossable barriers, like mountain range or oceans^[89]. Intercontinental exchanges of one bit of a given ecosystem to another, with deep repercussions for the ecosystems at the receiving end, happened several times throughout history. Globalization and traveling species on long distances are closely tied together because of the nature of globalization called for long-range exchanges or trade between various populations and for a fluid circulation of the constitutive units of those networks. On the biological or ecological side, trading populations saw sometimes the presence of certain species as a tool to fulfill their agenda or for trade opportunities, whereas organisms could use long-distance trade as a boon to expand their distribution area and succeed as species^[90]. From the biological standpoint, the expansion of the Mongol Empire in the 13th and 14th centuries were a bonanza for Yersinia pestis or the black plague bacillus, spreading from its original habitat in East Asia to Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe^[91].

The case V. velutina or the Asiatic hornet is quite similar, coming from the same area and attaining the territories that were affected by the Y. pestis during the Middle Ages. The similarities stop there, since the context of expansion of the Asiatic hornet is widely different from the black plague. Instead of using lices and then rats as vehicles and hosts to spread to new host populations, the Asiatic hornet traveled seemingly- even though the exact circumstances of its arrival to Europa is unknown- hidden in flowerpots stocked in a cargo convoy coming from China^[92]. This species dwells originally in tropical Asia, spanning from Afghanistan to most of South-East Asia, the subspecies that interests us the most is V. velutina nigrithorax. Its arrival in France from the south or neighboring countries dates back to 2004 or slightly before.

Since its first observation in 2004, the Asiatic hornet spread to most of France in a North-East orientation, reaching in the foreseeable future North Europa at an alarming rate^[93]. The absence of predators and coping mechanisms from local bee species makes the hornet a real threat for concerned bee colonies, mostly A. mellifera, whose colonies can be decimated by hornets. Bees are actually used by hornets to feed their hatchlings before the transformation to adults, who feed on nectar and fruits. The strategy of hornets is to adapt a stationary flight at the entrance of a beehive, waiting for bees to exit before capturing them. By preying on bees, hornets became a supplementary factor in the Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD, a worrying phenomenon observed throughout the world whose root causes are diverse. We can mention the intensive use of pesticides, the loss of habitat or the intensive use of colonies leading to a general exhaustion^[94].

A. cerena is experiencing a similar gruesome fate, but the hornet factor is less prevalent, it seems, to their Western counterpart. The aiding factor is the coevolution between honeybees and Asiatic or Giant hornets in the case of Japan. The bees use overheating as a defense mechanism against intruders. The defenders form a compact ball around the invaders and activate their body in order to increase the temperature inside the ball up to 46 C°, killing the hornet in the process by “cooking” it alive^[95]. Such behavior isn’t observed in A. mellifera and are virtually defenseless against the Asiatic hornets.

The main consequence of the arrival of V. velutina may have been to strengthen the bond between beekeepers and their colonies^[96]. The accumulation of potential threats and the looming climate change are making progressively beekeeping a risky business because of the justified doubts that one could have about the general health of colonies, without mentioning their productive capacities. The attention of beekeepers, in the stricken zones, has increased to check on the health of the colonies and to the reinforcement of prevention tools against hornets^[97]. Moreover, the lower general health of bees and the instability of climate lessened the production of honey. The overall value of honeybees and their status as the main pollinators of human agriculture increased, the trend would continue along the augmentation of the honey’s price^[98].

Outside of the social circles of beekeepers, the presence of V. velutina in Europe and North America provoked mainly a reaction of anxiety among the general public. The sensation of anxiety is fueled by the impression that the expansion of the species seems unstoppable and its voracity, capable of destabilizing an entire colony with a few individuals. It probably had the effect on the public of a heightened conscience of the fragility of honeybees and their exosystemic role. The underlying feeling, moreover, is the acute consciousness of the ecological and agricultural disaster of losing such a key-pollinator as honeybees. To a secondary extent, one may notice that the public is preoccupied by their own security concerning hornets, which is marginal compared to bees.

In an opposite registry, governments on the national and international levels began to react substantially to the arrival of the Asiatic hornet only in the 2010’s by declaring it an Exotic Invasive Species (EIS) on the European level in 2014 and on the national level in France in 2012^[99]. The declaration of the Asiatic hornet as an invasive species led to a systematization of signalization and eradication efforts on a transregional level, even though similar campaigns were already in vigor on a smaller scale. Such campaigns took in most cases the form of a search and destroy operation against hornet nests and the positioning of hornet traps to keep them away from habitats and from apiaries. The other type of measure is defensive by reinforcing the protection of honeybee nests, by adding wireframes at the gate of apiaries to prevent the hornets from entering the hives and by keeping a constant food supply to colonies^[100]. As a result, the hives are less likely to collapse due to a hornet attack and will be able to recover more rapidly in case of onslaught.

In the case of Switzerland (2020), or countries that could anticipate the arrival of hornets into their territory, the reaction bears similar mechanisms, with an anticipation of the effects and of the strategy to adopt. The main signal departed from the central government with an alert message indicating how to recognize an Asian hornet from a local one and the measures to adopt in case of an attested presence. The message is then relayed by different canals to reach the concerned beekeepers, by the press or specialized associations all over the country:

“08.10.2020
The Asian hornet has arrived in Switzerland and is starting to spread in the French-speaking part of the country. In Geneva, two nests have already been eliminated. It cannot be excluded that there will be others. Also, in the Jura (Le Noirmont) the pest has been seen - the search for a nest is in progress.

On the other hand, in Mont-sur-Rolle in the canton of Vaud, where a small nest was found in December 2019, no other Asian hornet has been discovered to date. The most effective control measure is the elimination of the nests. The use of traps is not recommended (too ineffective and non-selective).

The following measures allow beekeepers to best protect their bees from the Asian hornet:

Have strong colonies. Consistent evaluation and selection involve combining small, healthy colonies (less than 5 occupied frames) and eliminating weak colonies (Checklist 4.7. Colony assessment and selection).

Keep your eyes open and report suspicious insects to the SSA immediately (photo at info@apiservice.ch), so that nest removal can be done as quickly as possible (see checklist 2.7. Asian hornet Vespa velutina).

Protect the flight holes with a grid (instruction according to 2.7.1. ). This makes it more difficult for Asian hornets to catch bees on the flight board or even to enter the hive. Also, bees are less stressed if they have a safe place to take off or land. Ensure the flow of food. It is important that the bees have enough food available at all times.”^[101]

As we can see, the phenomenon of globalization has deep ecological impacts on the ecosystem of countries participating, willingly or not, in trade relationships. Goods, containers and populations traveling on different transport technologies revealed themselves to be perfect vessels or hosts for species to travel outside of their native ecosystems to explore and disperse to new horizons, with grim consequences at multiple occasions depending on their adoptive ecosystems^[102]. The rate of circulation is a crucial factor in the multiplication of (what we call through our lens) invasive species, because it multiplies de facto the probability of a species embarking in a ship or a container and crossing ecological barriers before arriving to a welcoming ecosystem.

The reaction of societies to these undesired results of intercontinental exchanges networks follows a similar pattern^[103]. First, a foreign species is detected and provokes little reaction initially until the invading species has become sufficiently problematic to provoke sizable damages. Second, the alarm is declared and a search for the elimination of the individuals of that species is put in place. In most cases, the key-factor in the success is the reactivity of authorities in regulating the invasive species’ population. However, the struggle observed in such societies are defensive battles because the authorities would react to the threat only once it becomes noticeable or when the invasive species is already well established.

In this article, we could see the arrival of Apis mellifera in Japan and the subsequent art of beekeeping inspired by the Western style. Beekeeping, as an ensemble of techniques and practical knowledge, followed the pace of Japanese premodern and modern history with its own chronology. The transition from a traditional domestic beekeeping style to a reformed style in Japan had common ties with a larger shift that occurred in agricultural technologies during the Bakumatsu to the Shōwa epochs.

During the Edo period, beekeeping was an activity practiced since the beginning of Japan’s written history, essentially dedicated for medical and religious purposes, that experienced a mutation with the diversification of uses of honey. To urban and the rural population of Japan who observed the rise of a consumer society, honey became progressively a commodity instead of an offering. Honey was used as a sweetener during the premodern era, which was concurrent with sugarcane in southern parts of Japan more suited for such a crop. With the rural industrious revolution, Japanese farmers saw honey as an interesting and easy investment in parallel to cash crops. This phenomenon was completed during the 18th century with the development of practical literature for beekeepers and objectifying bees as part of a resource pool.

The Imperial Restoration and the Universal Exhibition of Vienna in 1873 would play a key-role in Japan’s beekeeping history by allowing an intensification of exchanges and individuals with Euro-America and Japan. During the Universal Exhibition, the Japanese community used the World’s Fair as an opportunity to gather a maximum of information about European and American beekeeping, with the presence of future statesmen like Ōkuma Shigenobu. The first colonies of A. mellifera, arrived from the United States in 1879 with a few hives, starting a period of acclimatization and synthesis between the Western beekeeping and the indigenous style. The Ogasawara Island served as an intermediary station at the gates of Japan, where Aoyanagi, considered as the father of modern beekeeping in Japan, experimented with the best environment for honeybees in an insular Japanese context.

The method developed by Aoyanagi or Watanabe spread throughout the archipelago, taking the case of America as an objective to aim for progress. Experimental stations are coupled with agronomic schools with new methods in agricultural and traditional crafting techniques. The example of silk resembles the case of beekeeping, even though the degree to which the silk industry was mechanized and scaled up wasn’t with comparison to Japan. The main stakes for the supporters of a new beekeeping were to develop the potential Japan had with new tools and to promote a lofty means of income for farmers throughout Japan.

Afterwards, the embryonic stage of modern beekeeping in Japan was followed by widespread success even after the Pacific War. By the turn of the century, we can see a boom in the number of books dealing with beekeeping and the multiplication of periodicals centered around the beekeeping culture. The state of the market concerning honey and the derived products seem to expand at the same time, being a sign of the popular success of it as a sweetener and source of income. However, the darker side of this new beekeeping is its use as a tool for imperialism and colonialism, especially on the continent. The introduction of A. mellifera was generally a collaborator species of settler communities. For instance, Manchuria held the shape of an Eldorado for colonists with infinite possibilities for Japan’s future after 1931.

As we saw, commercial routes assume a role much larger than a simple pathway for transiting goods, these are travel channels for the people and life forms as well as ideas. The pathway connecting Euro-America to East Asia is no exception to this rule and saw multiple cases of biological exchanges, whose unwanted consequence was commonly an unchecked expansion of one species to a new ecosystem. Vespa velutina is an eloquent example for such exchanges and the nuisances that can generate such species to the host environment and the local domestic species^[104]. Bee colonies must face the Asiatic hornet, a supplementary threat along with other factors.

With this two-part article, I tried to stress the significance of globalization as a driving force in the history of beekeeping. Beekeeping’s history possesses a network and trajectory connecting various fields such as economic, science and environmental history. Its multiple aspects make an efficient lens to look at the translation and the spread of new agricultural techniques throughout the realm.

For a prolongation of the study, the next step would be to explore further the history of beekeeping in a broader socio-economic context in Euro-America or to study the trajectory of Japanese beekeeping during the war and Postwar period. It looks that the subject was only scratched and could still deliver a great deal of interesting research for the future.

Primary sources

---

Anonymous, “The Promising Beekeeping Business in South Manchuria” (Zenki yūbō ni naru Nanman no yōhōjigyō), 26.11.1930, in: Manshū Nichi Nichi Shimbun, Newspaper clippings collection of the University of Kōbe.

Anonymous, “The Presentation of the Five-Year Aid Plan centered around the Migrant Groups” (Imin shūdan buraku wo chūshin suru toshi kyūsai go-kanen kaikakuan wo happyō), 8.1.1936, in: Kyōgi Nippō, Newspaper clippings collection of the University of Kōbe.

General Secretariat of Ehime Prefecture, The Statistics of Ehime Prefecture (Ehime-ken tōkeisho), General Secretariat of Ehime Prefecture, 1941, ID-0032776-001, Digital Collections of the National Diet Library

Governor-General of Kwantung, Ground Army, Survey on the Products of Manchuria and Inner-Mongolia (Manmō sangyōshi), Minyūsha, Tokyo, 1919, ID-00533160, Digital Collections of the National Diet Library.

KAIBARA Ekken (1630-1714), The pharmacopeia of Japan (Yamato honzō), volume 14, 1709, Digital collections of the Diet National Library, ID000007326105

Nagano Prefecture Special Products, The Current Situation of Beekeeping in the Prefecture” (Kenka ni okeru yōhō no genkyō), 1933, Shinnō Education Association edition, Mainichi Shinbun, pp. 281-302

Unknown, Asian Hornet in Switzerland(Frelon asiatique en Suisse), 2020, View source.

TAMARI Kizō, Extended Amelioration of Beekeeping (Zōho yōhō kairyō setsu), Yurindo publishing, 1913, ID 24-689, National Diet Library.

TANBA Yoshiharu, MIZONOKUCHI Gekkō (text; drawing), Yōhō Ikken or A Picture of Beekeeping, 1872, View source

YOSHIDA Kōzō, The New Treaty of Experimental Beekeeping (Jikken Yōhō Shinsho), Sugimaru Kankō (ed.), 1908, ID-064788-000-4, National Diet Library.



Secundary sources

---

BONNEUIL Christophe et FRESSOZ Jean-Baptiste, L’événement anthropocène : la Terre, l’histoire et nous, Nouvelle éd. révisée et Augmentée., Paris, Éditions Points (coll. « Points »), 2016.

BRANDT Loren, MA Debin et RAWSKI Thomas, Industrialization in China, Bonn, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), 2016.

CARNINO Guillaume, HILAIRE-PEREZ Liliane et KOBILJSKI Aleksandra (eds.), Histoire des techniques: mondes, sociétés, cultures XVIe-XVIIIe siècle, 1re édition., Paris, PUF (coll. « Nouvelle clio »), 2016, 603 p.

CHRISTMAS Sakura, “An imperial sheep chase”, in: China Dialogue, 2017, View source,

CRANE Eva, The world history of beekeeping and honey hunting, New York, Routledge, 1999, 682 p.

FRANCKS Penelope, Japan and the great divergence: a short guide, London, Palgrave Macmillan (coll. « Palgrave studies in economic history »), 2016, 123 p.

FRANCKS Penelope, Rural economic development in Japan: from the nineteenth century to the Pacific War, London ; New York, Routledge (coll. « Routledge studies in the modern history of Asia »), 2006, 312 p.

HEPBURN Howard R. (ed.), Honeybees of Asia, Berlin Heidelberg, Springer, 2011, 669 p.

HOBSBAWM E. J, L’Âge des extrêmes: Le court vingtième siècle 1914-1991, Bruxelles, Édition Complexe, 2003.

HUFFMAN James L., Creating a public: people and press in Meiji Japan, Honolulu, Hawaii, University of Hawai’i Press, 1997, 573 p.

HUSEMANN Martin, STERR Andreas, MACK Swen et ABRAHAM Rudolf, « The northernmost record of the Asian hornet Vespa velutina nigrithorax (Hymenoptera, Vespidae) », Evolutionary Systematics, 4 février 2020, vol. 4, no 1, p. 1‑4.

KAISE Shūichi, The Western Honeybee, from Ogasawara Island to the Whole of Japan (Seiyō mitsubachi, Ogawasara tō kara Nihon zenkoku he), 2020, View source

KOHSAKA Ryo, PARK Mi Sun et UCHIYAMA Yuta, « Beekeeping and honey production in Japan and South Korea: past and present », Journal of Ethnic Foods, juin 2017, vol. 4, no 2, p. 72‑79.

KRITSKY Gene, The quest for the perfect hive: a history of innovation in bee culture, New York, Oxford University Press, 2010, 198 p.

MARCON Federico, The knowledge of nature and the nature of knowledge in early modern Japan, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press (coll. « Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University »), 2015, 415 p.

MILLER Ian Jared, THOMAS Julia Adeney et WALKER Brett L. (eds.), Japan at nature’s edge: the environmental context of a global power, Honolulu, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2013, 322 p.

MORRIS-SUZUKI Tessa, The technological transformation of Japan: from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, Cambridge ; New York, Cambridge University Press, 1994, 304 p.

MYERS Ramon Hawley, PEATTIE Mark R., CHEN Ching-chih et JOINT COMMITTEE ON JAPANESE STUDIES (eds.), The Japanese colonial empire, 1895-1945, Princeton, N.J, Princeton University Press, 1984, 540 p.

RAVINA Mark et OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, To stand with the nations of the world: Japan’s Meiji restoration in world history, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2017.

SMITH Norman (ed.), Empire and the environment in the making of Manchuria, Vancouver ; Toronto, UBC Press (coll. « Contemporary Chinese studies »), 2017, 299 p.

SOUYRI Pierre-François, Nouvelle histoire du Japon, Paris, Perrin, 2010, 627 p.

TANIMOTO Masayuki (ed.), The role of tradition in Japan’s industrialization: another path to industrialization, Oxfort ; New York, Oxford University Press (coll. « Japanese studies in economic and social history »), 2006, 342 p.

THOMAS Julia Adeney, Reconfiguring modernity: concepts of nature in Japanese political ideology, Berkeley, Calif, University of California Press (coll. « Twentieth-century Japan »), 2001, 239 p.

TOTMAN Conrad D., Japan: an environmental history, New paperback edition., London New York, I.B. Tauris (coll. « Environmental history and global change series »), 2016, 364 p.

TSING Anna Lowenhaupt, DEGER Jennifer, SAXENA Alder Keleman et ZHOU Feifei, Feral atlas: the more-than-human Anthropocene, s.l., 2020.

TSUTSUI William M., « Landscapes in the Dark Valley: Toward an Environmental History of Wartime Japan », Environmental History, 1 avril 2003, vol. 8, no 2, p. 294‑311.

WITTNER David G. et BROWN Philip C. (eds.), Science, technology, and medicine in the modern Japanese Empire, London ; New York, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016, 290 p.

ZIETZ Björn P. et DUNKELBERG Hartmut, « The history of the plague and the research on the causative agent Yersinia pestis », International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, 2004, vol. 207, no 2, p. 165‑178.