The people of Dechang Lisu Autonomous County in Sichuan Province have had the habit of eating horse bee pupae since ancient times, and they will also put up horse bee pupae feasts. How did they get the large number of wasp pupae they ate?
Locals, young and old, have the habit of eating horse bee pupae
Photographers Ran Yujie and Liu Cheng and I set off from Chengdu to Jinsha Township and Nanshan Township, two townships in Dechang County that are famous for their horse bee hunting. Go find the story behind the Lisu people's consumption of the horse bee pupae.
Clever bee-catcher
We arrived at Guanyintang Village in Jinsha Township and met Gu Xiaoqing, a young bee catcher. Although Gu Xiaoqing was only 16 years old at that time, he was a skilled player with four years of experience in bee catching.
Gu Xiaoqing, dressed in white, is helping out at home
There are about three ways to find wasps, all three of which require excellent vision: the first is to listen to the sound of wasps in the jungle, and then search and track; the second is to look for the hive directly through the gaps in the branches; the third is to catch the foraging worker bees as a guide, and let the worker bees lead them straight to the hive. This is a skill that only skilled hands can master, and it must be bold and careful.
This time, Gu Xiaoqing adopted the method of catching the worker bee as a guide. He tied a red dragonfly to a bamboo pole, a favorite food of the wasps. After a long wait, a wasp spotted a dragonfly on a bamboo pole, and it pounced on it, desperately biting the dragonfly. Gu Xiaoqing slowly moved the bamboo pole down, and then carefully put a long hair on the bee waist. This long hair was tied by him with a horseshoe buckle beforehand, which could be slowly tightened, and a white chicken feather was tied at the other end of the hair, which was used as a reference for tracking.
Care must be taken at this time so as not to alarm the worker bees
The wasp bites the dragonfly and takes off. We ran desperately after the white chicken feathers. The nest is about 300 meters away on a eucalyptus tree, about 7 meters above the ground, just beginning to develop, not much larger than a person's fist. Gu Xiaoqing climbed up the tree pole, carefully observed the movement of the wild bees, and quickly blocked the exit with cotton when confirming that there was no danger, and then covered it with a bag. He broke the branches attached to the hive and took the hive home.
He hung the newly picked hive on a tree near his aunt's house, only about a meter above the ground. After many generations of groping, they have mastered how to choose the location where the hive hangs.
The nest handle of the wild hive will be tied to the trees near the home, and the wild wasp will become domesticated, but all its living habits will not be disturbed by any artificiality
Hang low for later picking, provided there is almost no one passing by
If someone passes by often, it needs to be hung on a high place. Many beehives are hung under the eaves of houses four or five meters above the ground
Lisu bee catchers bring the hive back to the cottage and wait until the colony is the largest to start pupating. We made an appointment before we set foot on our way home, and in the fall we came back to interview to find out how they picked the hive.
Fire to get the nest
5 months later, we saw Gu Xiaoqing again, and he was ready to burn the nest. Burning a hive is their traditional way of nesting, and the tools used are simple – long bamboo poles and flammable strips. After ignition, the flames burn in the air, and swarms of horse bees go around dodging the flames and smoke, which is the most dangerous time for people to be attacked.
At that time, the fist-sized hive had grown very large. Gu Xiaoqing was quite experienced, and in less than a minute, he put down the torch, cut off the branches, and peeled off the hive to extract the hive directly
This looked at the very large hive, but did not expect that there were very few bee pupae inside, it seemed that he cut early
My aunt's family also came to help, sorting the pupae by quality. These pupae are thick and conical, with white, yellowish or blackened pupae. Milky white means the pupae are younger, taste better and sell for a higher price
Leaving Gu Xiaoqing's house, we followed another wave of bee catchers to burn the nest of tuqin bees in the wild. The scientific name of the earth harp is the golden ring wasp, which is more than 40 mm long and is one of the largest wasps in the world. The golden-ringed wasp is the king of the bee colony, in addition to hunting other insects, when it is not easy to forage on rainy days, it will sweep away a nest of bees, and it will also attack other small and medium-sized wasps such as concave wasps.
This is a medium-sized earthen wasp, scientific name golden ring wasp, with a body length of more than 40mm
From left to right are bee catchers Chen Hongfa, Li Mingsong and Wang Bo. Each of them is an excellent hunter and has a very good ability to work in teams
Wang Bo used the same method as Gu Xiaoqing: using the worker bee as a guide, but he used the golden ring wasp's favorite rat meat to lure
After tracking worker bees to find the hive, they wait until dark before they can begin to move. Wang Bo was tired, so he fell asleep on the field. Sleeping in the open wilderness and dressing up is common for them.
They often spend ten days in the jungle looking for a hive, without extra clothes and covers, and spend the night under trees or caves, where a few pieces of dry food can survive in the mountains for a long time
The sun was about to set completely, and Wang Bo led us to the hive. Finally arrive at a cornfield. Below the cornfield is a water-eroded valley where hard clay is forming an earthen forest, and the hive is built on the edge of an earthen cliff on the opposite bank. The almost ninety-degree vertical cliff was difficult to climb, and Wang Bo was as dexterous as an ape, blocking the exit of the hive in the blink of an eye.
From the telephoto lens, we can see the tuqin bee laboriously building a nest and transporting prey
Originally thought that they would raise a raging fire to get the hive, wang Bo took out a small bamboo tube from his pocket and shook some gunpowder into the hive, and the little firework that ignited disappeared in an instant.
Ignite the lead and make the ferocious earth bee lose consciousness in the air waves and heat in an instant, and then dig up the pupae.
Wang Bo and the three of them quickly dug the nest, and the hive built underground was exposed, and the neat hexagonal hive was like a carefully planned high-rise building, which was being picked up by them "on the first floor and the first floor". The pupae of this bee is the most expensive, and the milky white pupae is fattened, and they say they can sell for a good price.
Visit professional beekeepers and leave a special memorial
Afterwards, we went to visit a mountain man named Fan Shijin, who lived entirely on catching and raising horse bees. Fan Shijin said that his grandfather or earlier in their family had begun to hunt horse bees, and several of his brothers had also been hunting horse bees since childhood. Nowadays, with more and more bee-catching teams and fewer wild wasps, Fan Shijin began to wonder if it was possible to make raising wasps into an industry, so that these wild wasps can survive the winter normally and settle in the same place in the next year. He began to try not to burn, but to take the pupae to keep the nest. This time he was going to take a hive this way.
Fan Shijin put on a motorcycle helmet and told us in which direction we should shoot, and if attacked by a wasp, run into the pine forest. At the beginning of filming, Ran Yujie loudly informed us: "Hurry down the mountain, retreat, I was stung by the Tuqin bee!" "I kept thinking about photographing the queen wasp, so I asked Ran Yujie to wait in our SUV and tell him that I had a few minutes to finish." Oops, I'm stung too! "Liu Cheng, who was filming the hive up close opposite me, was also injured. At this time, I was also chased around by the angry horse bees, and fled into the pine forest for a few turns before dodging the attack.
On the left is photographer Ran Yujie, and on the right is Liu Cheng. The two swollen more than each other, this dramatic scene made us laugh in shock.
The one who stinged Ran Yujie was the golden ring wasp, which the locals said wast to be very powerful, and the sting of Liu Cheng was a smaller horse bee, the ink-breasted wasp. The difference between the two bee venoms was evident from their injuries, and Ran Zaijie's upper eyelid was all puffy, larger than an egg, somewhat transparent, and this eye could hardly be opened. He said the pain in his head was unbearable! Liu Cheng's wound was on his forehead, swollen only one bag the size of a quail egg.
When Fan Shijin carried the hive to the pine forest to collect pupae, I still had palpitations. While the swarm was still dancing, we saw the queen bee.
The queen bee looks completely different from the queen bee of the bee, the queen of the bee is pupae-like, this horse bee queen is very different, and the adult bee looks the same, only missing two pairs of wings. Later, we found out that this horse wasp is called the ink-breasted wasp, which is also a horse wasp that is widely distributed in China.
Fan Shijin said that when it was dark, he would put the queen bee back, and the bee bag would be restored to about the same size as the original tomorrow. I didn't expect the wasp to have such an efficient construction ability.
Fan Shijin replaced two small hives where the hive was originally hung, and the large swarm of wasps immediately stopped their retaliation and began to build a new hive.
A month later, we came to Fan's house again. The hive we photographed a month ago was again pupae-packed and weighed about the same as before. This time, Fan Shijin cut four hives and handed them over to the vendors from Huaping in Lijiang, Yunnan. The vendor's bid was higher than all the acquisition points in Dechang, and the price of the purchase together with the hive was 40 yuan a pound, and Fan Shijin's four hives totaled 26 pounds, earning more than 1,000 yuan on the day. This year he has more than 30 hives to sell, which is still a lot of income.
Professional beekeeper Fan Shijin has a good harvest! The people in the village were also happy for him, sending him to the village entrance to the purchase point to sell bee pupae, because of his proper method, he sold the bee pupae one by one, and he was happy to make money happily in the alternative life of planting and dancing with bees.
Before leaving, he said that it would be better if he could cooperate with experts or entomologists who study horse bees to make farming wasps into an industry, and there are still several key problems that he cannot solve, such as how can wild bees survive the winter safely? How to keep a newborn queen from escaping into hibernation in the wild? Can it be artificially bred, etc. These questions have stumped the brave and innovative bee catcher. If all the nests were burned for pupae, would these creatures become extinct in a desperate way? Once these beneficial insects that are beneficial to agriculture and forestry disappear, they will definitely bring terrible consequences to the natural world. We look forward to an early resolution of these issues.
Photography Ran Yujie Liu Qiankun Liu Cheng