Do you like bees? I think most people doesn’t like them because they are dangerous insects. However, there is a person who really loves bees in Tohmi City, Nagano. His name is Mr. Kuniyoshi Shiozawa, and he is the founder of this marvelous beehive art museum. I visited it in the winter of 2002 after the Shinshu Golden Castle that I wrote an article on before.
I could find this museum easily because there was a huge metallic sculpture of a bee in front of the museum. I paid three-hundred yen for the entrance fee and looked around the inside of the museum. Mainly, he collected various shapes of beehives, which were made by Japanese yellow hornets. They have a habit of filling the space between two adjacent beehives, so he pastes small honeycombs on various things and waits for the hornets build their artwork.
The signboard read, “We have one-thousand and six-hundred pieces of honeycomb art here. This is the world record!” It’s true. You can find the beckoning cat carrying a big beehive on his head and the statue of the god of wealth also carrying honeycomb on his/her/its head and so on. He made the hornets to build a huge triangular beehive and named it Mt. Fuji.
When I visited this museum, there was a Japanese restaurant near it, and I had a bowl of rice topped with steamed bee larvae. The taste was good, but the appearance was…, I’ll leave it to your imagination! Unfortunately, this diner was closed so you can’t eat it there, but you can purchase it online here.
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