——Interview with Kikuji Yamaguchi, founder of Royal Jelly Co., Ltd. in Japan
Once the self-sufficiency rate of the Japanese honey market was 20%, now it is only 7%, and the remaining 93% depends on imported honey. Of the 93 percent of imported honey, 73 percent came from China.
In recent years, a wave of beekeeping has emerged in Japan. Whether it's the top floor of the Ginza Building in Tokyo, Hokkaido High School, or even the airports of local Cities in Japan, you can see busy bees and neatly arranged beehives. In China, the beekeeping industry is gradually becoming one of the leading industries for targeted poverty alleviation, and China is also the world's first producer of bee products.
Japan Silver Clan Building
Tokyo
Behind the great development of China's modern beekeeping industry, there are also forces promoted by the Japanese. This is often unknown or overlooked. Today, we are interviewing a Japanese doctor of agronomy and director of the JRJ Institute of Bee Science, Kihisa Yamaguchi, a Doctor of Agronomy and director of the JRJ Institute of Bee Science, who has been working on improving beekeeping technology in China for more than 40 years and who often travels to apiaries around China for on-site instruction.
More than 40 years ago, Yamaguchi Kikuji's father used royal jelly to cure liver cancer, after which he devoted himself to the research of royal jelly, established the Japanese royal jelly co., Ltd. in 1969, and in 1993 came to Qinghai Province, China to establish a pollution-free, pollution-free and high-quality royal jelly production plant, and promoted and applied his research and reform of the "48-hour milk method" in China, providing technical support for the development of the beekeeping industry in Qinghai and even China. He has also been very concerned about the training of Chinese beekeepers, and since April 2001, he has set up scholarships for the beekeeping departments of Chinese universities, and funded the invitation of Chinese beekeepers to Japan for exchange and study.
Kihisa Yamaguchi: In 1877, in order to help the tenant farmers and other farming classes, the government imported a large number of bees from the United States and began to promote the new livestock industry of beekeeping. Japan is surrounded by the sea on all sides, so there are no pests, and there are flowers blooming from the south to the north, so it is a country with a lot of nature. At that time, 75% of Japan was a green zone, and such land conditions were very suitable for beekeeping and honey collection, so the beekeeping industry soon became popular and prosperous.
In fact, honey culture first began in Europe, and there was beekeeping in the era of Mesopotamian civilization that developed between the two river basins of the Tigris River and the Euphrates River. Beekeeping in Japan began in the Yamato period, but it was still the old style of beekeeping at that time. By the middle of the 18th century, after improving the variety and improving the honey collection efficiency of bees, beekeeping officially expanded globally as an industry.