Bees Against Elephants

This is not a cartoon joke: the Goliath of our days can be chased away by the same insects: bees. The giant mammals evacuate the place as soon as they hear the buzz of a bee swarm.

In the end, this could be their salvation. Strategically placed beehives could prevent elephants from raiding crops, decreasing man-beast conflicts when the pachyderms are killed. You can imagine that only one elephant destroys a corn field in just one night, that would provide food for a whole African family.

"If we could use bees to reduce elephant crop-raiding and tree destruction and enhance local income through the sale of honey, this could be a significant step forward towards sustainable human-elephant coexistence," said zoologist Lucy King at the University of Oxford.

There were many previous clues suggesting that elephants avoided bees. In Kenya, acacia trees with empty or occupied beehives are much less damaged than trees lacking hives. In Zimbabwe, a team observed elephants creating new trails to avoid beehives.

The African killer bees (Apis mellifera scutellata) from eastern and south Africa are notoriously aggressive and persistent near their hives and swarms are known to have killed even African buffalo.

To check the elephants' reaction, King's team recorded the buzz of agitated African bees.

"We recorded our bee sounds from a wild hive that we found inside a tree trunk along the Ewaso Ng’iro river in Samburu." said King.

The recording was played back four minutes through wireless speakers located inside fake plastic tree trunks to 17 elephant groups resting under trees in Samburu National Reserve (Kenya) during the midday heat. 16 groups fled within 80 seconds of hearing the buzz. In fact, 8 groups reacted in only 10 seconds. The group that did not react to the buzzing was made of young individuals, which perhaps had not suffered from a previous bee attack.

"When you first mention this idea to people, they usually chuckle at the images it invokes, as it seems so improbable that such a large, powerful creature like an elephant could possible be afraid of tiny bees," King told LiveScience.

But "the sting of an African bee is absolute agony to humans—believe me, I know!—so it's not impossible to imagine that being stung in the sensitive areas around the eyes, behind the ears and even up the trunk would be similarly painful to an elephant." she added.

The most important fact is "that whole herds of elephants moved away together from the sound. If only one or two moved away, the use of bees as a deterrent would only be partially useful." said King.

Using beehives could impede elephants from approaching farms "and therefore contribute to a safer future for both elephants and the people who have to live with them," King said.

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