MARAUDING elephants that destroy crops and damage trees are a serious problem in many parts of Africa. But there could be a simple and relatively safe way to stop them in their tracks, by employing the talents of the tiny African honeybee.
The number of elephants in Kenya has risen over the past decade, with some disastrous results. Not only do these huge animals raid local farms, but they trample someone to death an average of once every two weeks, fuelling calls for the beasts to be culled. Now a biologist has discovered a possible deterrent: the elephants are extremely wary of trees that house honeybee hives.
鈥淚 am puzzled why nobody has thought of this before,鈥� says Fritz Vollrath at the University of Oxford. 鈥淲hen an elephant knocks a beehive they are not cavalier about it. They run and the bees will follow them for miles.鈥� He says that placing hives of the honeybee Apis mellifera africana strategically around local farms and fragile habitats could be an effective way to deter the animals.
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Vollrath put 30 unoccupied and 6 occupied beehives in some of the trees growing on a hectare of bush frequently damaged by elephants on Laikipia Plateau in Kenya. On average the elephants attacked 9 out of 10 trees that didn鈥檛 have hives, severely damaging a quarter. But they steered clear of all six trees with occupied hives. The elephants also left alone one-third of the trees with empty hives, suggesting that some had learnt not to take the risk (Naturwissenschaften, DOI: 10.1007/s00114-002-0375-2).
The bees deter elephants by stinging vulnerable areas such as the eyes, belly, behind the ears and under the trunk. People could be at risk from the bees, admits Vollrath, but that may be outweighed by the risk of being killed by an elephant. Preliminary experiments by Vollrath show that elephants also avoid the sound of angry bees played from loudspeakers.