Due to strong population growth and persistent drought, people and elephants increasingly collide on the African continent. In Kenya they try to keep the pachyderms at bay with bees.
Two gaping holes, the size of an elephant, in the white screen of the vegetable greenhouse are the silent witnesses of what happened two weeks earlier on the small farm in Laikipia. “Our spinach, kale and tomatoes were almost ready to harvest,” says Moloiyan Mugo of the Nabulu women’s group. “But following sunset, ten elephants entered our property and stormed the greenhouse. They ate all the vegetables and destroyed the drip irrigation.”
The 35-year-old woman holds up the broken pipes. “Fortunately, they haven’t managed to knock over our water tower yet,” she says, hitting the metre-high steel poles with her palm.
The 25 women of the nomadic Masai tribe decided a few years ago that they no longer wanted to depend on their husbands, who still roam around with cows. They started a farm on the savannah soil of Kenya’s Laikipia province, north of Mount Kenya. However, as soon as a solar-powered well was dug thanks to a donation and they started growing vegetables, they were harassed by pachyderms.
“Elephants can smell from miles away whether there is food or water,” says the woman, dressed in a red Masai dress. Each time, the women reported the damage to the Kenya Wildlife Service, the government agency that is supposed to pay compensation. “The officials always wrote neat reports, but we never received any compensation.”
Due to a growing world population, there is less and less space for wild animals. Conflicts between humans and animals are increasing as a result, the World Wildlife Fund and the UN Environment Program concluded in a report in 2021. Four years of persistent drought in Kenya is further exacerbating the situation.
“The drought is forcing elephants to leave their protected natural areas and look for food and water in areas inhabited by humans,” confirms Lucy King of animal organization Save the Elephants. At least 208 of a total of 36,000 elephants in Kenya died last year due to drought. At least two Kenyan civilians were killed in clashes with elephants in the same year.
Poles are pushed over with tusks
Electric fences are being installed in more and more places to keep elephants away. However, this does not appear to be a solution either. “Elephants learn quickly,” says Mugo, who also has an electric fence around her farm. “In the meantime, the animals manage to push over the poles with their tusks and legs. That’s how they come in.”
Zoologist King came up with an original solution to keep the animals at a distance. “Nomads in northern Kenya told us they saw elephants never eat leaves from trees that had bees.” However, while it’s virtually impossible for the insects to pierce the thick skin of the world’s largest land mammals, bees seem to know how to get around the eyes, behind the ears and even into an elephant’s trunk. Elephants are terrified of bees because of this. “The matriarch of an elephant herd appears to remember for years which trees have beehives and keeps her herd far away from them,” said the scientist.
The animal organization has therefore installed beehive fences in several places in Kenya in recent years to keep elephants at a distance. “It really works,” says Jeremiah Mwenda, field officer in the Ngare Ndare forest in central Kenya, where in 2015 they hung seven beehives along the fence in places where the animals regurgitated most. “The elephants stopped breaking out and the nuisance for surrounding farmers decreased.”
The queen cannot feed the larvae
Unfortunately, bees also suffer from drought. “Three years ago, the bees migrated because of this, probably to places where there are still flowers,” says forest ranger Mwenda, opening one of the yellow beehives that are suspended with wire between two trees. King confirms the problem. “Due to the lack of rain, flowers disappear and the queen stops mating and laying eggs because she has nothing to feed the larvae. Bees then often migrate.”
As a result, the nuisance around the Ngare Ndare forest is now worse than ever, says wheat farmer Danny Kamanja. “Last night four male elephants broke out and destroyed my wheat field.” The 64-year-old Kamanja walks between crushed plants and shows wheat stalks from which the elephants have bitten off the top part with the wheat grains. “That way I have nothing left to harvest.”
According to the farmer, there is much less to eat inside the forest due to the drought. “My wheat has to dry in the field for another month. But the smell drives the elephants crazy.”
Kamanja hopes that the drought will end soon, so that future wheat will grow better and the bees will return. “Those bees were really effective at keeping the elephants away.”
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