Honey Bee Farm - Apiary- Beekeeping - Japan

*it's already full of volunteers in this 2023. The possibility I can accept you is low. Please, understand that. And, you should check the transportation cost to come Tokushima prefecture (for example, Tokushima station.) before you message me. You can learn how to take care of honey bees and gain insight to a Japanese lifestyle. For a short time you will learn how to manage and live a beekeeper’s life, and you will see what tasks there are to be done in a beekeeper’s home. I will provide 3 meals a day for you and prepare your bed. In the mornings　and evenings, please prepare your own breakfast and supper with the ingredients provided. You are welcome to cook the other meals if you’re interested, but it’s not necessary. I will try to accommodate your dietary needs but please keep in mind that I am working with a limited budget. I'll effort to let you enjoy staying here, please help me back as good as you can. This is ideal relationship between host and volunteer guests, I think. Please, relax. I’m not strict guy. Some people misunderstand that beekeeping is easy peasy like that bees manage their life themselves so that beekeeper don't usually do anything. If you think so, it's completely different. Beekeeping requires lot of effort and experience, knowledge, determine. That's very deep to learn and practice, even I feel it worth to use my entire own life. If you're interested in trying to do beekeeping yourself someday, I have a confident that my place is so good to stay here. Are you ready to learn and practice a lot !?;-) I will teach you how to open my hives and confirm whether there is queen bee or not, and if any of the bees are sick. We will travel between my bee hives around Tokushima to check on the hives. In May and June, September, October, we will harvest honey together and put it into jars. I will also show you how to craft the hives and comb frames, and prepare the areas in and around the hives. I'll provide you the beekeeping equipment, like rubber boots, jumpsuit, the net for protection your face, hat, glove and anything. So you don't need to prepare anything for Beekeeping, but you are gonna be stung by bees at least twice or three times. You know that's beekeeping　;-) (If you have thin long sleeve pants and thin long sleeve Tshirts, it's better to protect your skin from bees penetrate stings) I recommend you to take the insurance for taking the medical care just in case. Because it's outdoor work. I've invited more than 70 volunteers, and I took volunteer to hospital is only one time. Bee sting is painful for five minutes, and you're gonna understand it's not big deal. Your parts of body is gonna be swollen up, and it would recover in a week. Don't be afraid that. Some volunteers say "I like this my swollen up hand", and I have same feeling as them. Yes, you're gonna like it ;-) I ain't an organic farmer, but just specialist of bee. I would ask you to use herbicide or something chemical stuff. Please, obey and understand that. I'm not using these things for fun, it's necessary to manage my place. I don't want to write the documents for you to getting some kind of tourist visa, so please don't ask me that.

Hi, my name is Aki and I’m a beekeeper in Awa city, Tokushima. I take care of my european honey bees that are placed around the Yoshinogawa river, which give the bees access to harvest pollen from many different flowers and trees. I tend to my bees nearly every day, hand-craft the hives and prepare jars for harvesting the honey. Come spring and fall, I harvest the honey. I have many hives and they continue to increase. Therefore, I cannot take care of them alone, and need help looking after them. Beekeeping is fun and interesting as you think. But it involves tough work like heavy lifting. If you recognize this place is just recreation spot or kids education spot, you feel this place is tiring (and I regret to invite you definitely ). My beekeeping style is organized by heavy lifting work basically. I have invited several weird volunteers who doesn't have social common sense unfortunately. I don't afford to let weird volunteers stay my place anymore. I really need helpful volunteers who have the thoughtfulness, consideration, preparedness, motivation to help me, and motivation to practice learning what beekeeping is like . In my place, host(me ) and volunteers are close. I invite two volunteers generally. It means three people in my place including me. Maximum is three volunteers. In this COVID situation, it’s hard to get the volunteers. There may be the situation that volunteer is only you. You can ask me easy how many volunteers are going to stay my place while you stay here.(I understand it’s important information especially for woman.) We share the same house and kitchen, any amenities together. And, we have the lunch together. If you don’t like this kind of circumstance, I don’t recommend you to stay here. This place require the teamwork of two or three people. It means that to make the harmony to other members are first priority, but not showing your weird ego, unique philosophy, unique opinion, egocentric lifestyle. I saw volunteers make the bad atmosphere each other several times. Be nice to each other, and be thoughtful to each other, but Don't make the bad atmosphere in my place. It makes my delicious lunch meal turn to be bad taste! When you mail me, please try to make proper sentence so that I can understand what kind of person you're like. If I feel your consideration or thoughtfulness or truth intellectual curiousness about the bees from your text, I will effort to reply you back in one day with the respect to you. And i will show you the video what my place is like. I appreciate to everybody who use their own precious time to me!