Even in Kyoto

To the best of my knowledge, none of the native bees form such enormous hives--they have much smaller hives that are much less conspicuous, and most are solitary, not social. Here's a pretty awesome-looking website on all of the other kinds of bees in Arizona, and how to encourage them.

And yeah, it sounds like it would be hard to get into that hive--you'd probably have to take a crowbar to the top--it's common for the bees to glue everything together, because they'd prefer it if you didn't get inside. They're pretty hard to photograph because they also move around quite a bit.